by Chris Ould
“Did you find out why her disappearance was linked to the other two girls?” I asked, thinking of the appended memo on the file he’d shown me yesterday.
“Yes, I think so,” he said. “Eight months before Inge-Lise went missing Rikke Villadsen’s body was found in a ditch near Nørre Vissing, about five kilometres away. She was fourteen and she had been raped and then stabbed. There was a large investigation, of course, but in the end there was no good suspect so it wasn’t solved.”
I thought that through. “So there was a suspected link between Inge-Lise and Rikke Villadsen because of similarities in their age, sex and the geographic location.”
Friis nodded. “Yes, I think that was the pattern they saw.” He looked at me directly. “So, can you add something to that?”
“It’s possible, yeah,” I told him. “I can’t make a definite link yet, but when I was in the Faroe Islands last week they were—”
I broke off when I saw Steffen jogging along the path, raising a hand. He came to a halt in front of us. “Jeppe’s found something,” he said, gesturing over his shoulder. “I think you should come.”
* * *
I could hear the engine before we saw the machine: a small Bobcat digger down in the hollow. Twin impressions from its tracks showed where it had been driven over the low bank and its digging bucket was now resting on the ground at the end of a scraped trench, which bisected the hollow almost exactly.
Jeppe and a second man – one I didn’t know – were standing on the far side of the trench and as Friis and I got closer I could see that they’d dug down about two and a half feet into the sandy soil. It had taken several passes, each progressively deeper, judging by the marks on the trench walls.
Friis didn’t bother with English for my benefit, but instead spoke briskly and to the point, showing his ID and asking what they had found.
Out of instinct Jeppe and the other man had taken a step back from the trench when we arrived, but now Jeppe moved forward again, pointing into the bottom of the channel they’d dug, using a piece of twig to indicate the exact spot.
Friis and I went to the side of the trench and squatted down. There, outlined in pale off-white against the soil, was a circle of bone where the digger’s bucket had sliced through the side of a skull. I could see it was a skull because someone had roughly scraped away the soil on one side and revealed the left eye socket and part of the cheekbone.
“For God’s sake,” Friis said in English, maybe thinking better of letting his exasperation come out in his own language. He turned to me. “Did you know they were doing this?”
I shook my head. “No. If I had…”
I didn’t finish the thought because I wasn’t sure where it was going. It was beside the point now anyway, which Friis seemed to realise, too. He took another look at the bottom of the trench then straightened up and told Jeppe and the other man to switch off the digger and leave everything as it was. It was a bit late for standard procedure, but at least he could stop things getting any worse.
I moved away while Friis made a couple of phone calls, lighting a cigarette and making a point of staying well clear of Jeppe’s trench. When Friis finished on the phone he came over to me.
“I’ve sent for a technical team,” he said.
“How long till they get here?”
“An hour, maybe. On a Friday afternoon…” He didn’t bother to go on and I knew he was pissed off, either because he’d been pre-empted or because the excavation had been clumsy. He obviously viewed me with some suspicion now, too, and in his place I’d have felt the same.
“So, I think you had better tell me about this,” he said, nodding towards the trench. “How did you know there was a body here?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “Not for sure, but I thought there was a chance there might be.”
“Why?”
I knew that whatever I said now was bound to raise as many questions as it answered, but I had to start somewhere.
“When I was in the Faroe Islands last week they were investigating two bodies that had just been unearthed,” I told him. “A woman and her ten-year-old daughter. The deaths were dated to the 1970s and the girl’s grave had been disguised – covered over – by a bonfire. So, when I heard that the search team looking for Inge-Lise Hoffmann had examined a bonfire site here as well I thought the two might be connected.”
“Why?” Friis said with a frown. “There are thousands of places where there have been bonfires every Sankthans. Why would you think that one here would be significant?”
“Because there are other things that might link Vesborggård House to the grave site on the Faroes,” I said. “I don’t know all the details of that case, but there’s a Faroese officer called Hentze who does. He’s on his way here now.”
That threw him a little. “On his way from the Faroes?”
“No, he’s already in Denmark.”
This didn’t help Friis a great deal. It gave him no greater understanding, and right now that was what he wanted most. “Okay,” he said after a moment. “But whoever else comes, what I still don’t understand is why you have any interest in this.” He gestured again at the trench, then made it broader to encompass the whole location. “What is it that makes you come back here today?”
“You need to see something,” I said. “Up there.”
I led the way up the slight rise to the Blue House and pulled the door open. Friis gave the damaged wood of the frame a dubious look but then chose to ignore it as I took out my phone.
“I found the girl in the abuse photographs – the woman now,” I told him. “She’s Thea Rask, the girl who was supposed to have absconded from Vesborggård House in 1976.”
“You know this for sure?” Friis said with a frown. “You’ve spoken to her?”
“Yeah. She has no memory of the actual abuse, which may be a good thing, but there’s no doubt it happened to her.”
I handed him the phone with the uncropped picture on its screen. The relatively small size may have helped to reduce its impact, but even so I saw his reaction. He looked for a moment longer, then away, but I knew that it wouldn’t be enough to banish the image in his head.
“I think that picture was taken here,” I said, gesturing into the building. “If you zoom in on the floor in the photo and compare it to the floor inside, I think they match.”
He took the phone and went inside while I waited. When he came out again he handed the phone back to me.
“So you think Inge-Lise Hoffmann was also attacked here like this,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
“If it’s her body in that hollow, then yeah, that’s one theory,” I said.
“And in that case the same attacker might also be responsible for the murder of Rikke Villadsen.”
“It’s possible, yeah.”
He nodded and fell silent for a moment, probably putting it all together in roughly the same way I had. I lit another cigarette while I waited and in the end he drew a breath. “There’s a question,” he said.
“Only one?”
He ignored that. “If you believe the same man killed Rikke Villadsen and Inge-Lise Hoffmann, then how did Thea Rask stay alive? Has she told you?”
I shook my head. “I think she was drugged,” I told him. “She doesn’t remember anything until the next day, but I think she was taken away before she could be killed.”
“By who?”
“My mother,” I said.
* * *
There was no reply from Mikkjal Tausen’s phone; it went straight to voicemail, as if it was switched off, or just possibly in a tunnel. Annika left it ten minutes, then tried again. The result was the same.
Frustrated, she went down to the control room and looked at the screen on the wall that showed the location of patrol cars from their GPS trackers. Alfred Tróndheim was closest, parked up at Skáli, probably drinking coffee at the tank station there. Alfred wasn’t renowned as the most discreet or tactful of men and Annika was reluctant to entrus
t him with anything which might require subtlety, but it would take her almost an hour to drive to Rituvík herself on the off chance that Tausen was at home.
She gave it a moment’s consideration, then called Alfred. “Can you do me a favour and drive round to Rituvík, the home of Mikkjal Tausen?” she said, giving him the full address.
“Okay, what’s the problem?”
“He isn’t answering his phone and I just want to know if he’s there. If he is could you ask him to call me on this number. It’s purely routine, but Hjalti Hentze has gone off and left me without half the information I should have on the Justesen suicide. He wants it signed off today so I just need to confirm a couple of things with Justesen’s next of kin.”
She felt slightly bad about impugning Hjalti, but thought he’d approve of the tactic.
“Okay,” Alfred said. “I’ll go and see if he’s in. I was just leaving here anyway.”
“Thanks, I owe you one. I’d really like to get this file off my desk today.”
Twenty minutes later Alfred rang back. “There’s no one at home,” he reported. “Although there’s a car here. I left a note in his mailbox.”
“Thanks,” Annika said. “That’s a great help.”
She rang off and considered her options. It wouldn’t be of much use to Hjalti if she simply gave up on questioning Tausen because he wasn’t at home. He could be anywhere, doing anything, Annika reasoned, but all the same, if anyone knew where he might be it was his girlfriend, so she put in a call to Müller’s letting agency and asked for Sigrun Ludvig.
“Sorry, she’s not here,” the man on the other end said. “She’s taken some leave. Until Tuesday or Wednesday, I think.”
Sigrun Ludvig’s address was only a five-minute drive from the station. Annika picked up her coat.
* * *
The house was quite small: a modest, modern terrace with a neatly painted picket fence delineating its tarmac parking space, a silver Skoda squarely in the centre. A stained-glass sunflower hung inside the porch window and a brass wind chime dripped water in the drizzle as Annika pressed the bell.
If the bell rang inside it was inaudible to Annika, so after waiting a few seconds she knocked instead: the police officer’s rap, firm and businesslike.
“She’s away, goða,” a man’s voice called.
Annika looked in the direction from which it had come. A man in his seventies was sitting on the porch next door but one.
Annika went back to the pavement and then along to the old man. He had a week’s worth of white stubble and was wearing a coat, sitting in a striped camping chair smoking a cigarette. Beside him on an old table there were three empty coffee mugs and a plant pot nearly overflowing with cigarette butts.
“Hey,” Annika said in greeting. “Do you know when Sigrun went out?”
“Yep.” The old man nodded and flicked ash off his cigarette in the approximate direction of the plant pot.
“Would you like to tell me?” Annika asked. She showed him her warrant card.
The man wasn’t overly impressed. “In trouble, is she?”
“No, not at all. I just need to ask her a couple of questions.”
“Well, I reckon you missed your chance then,” the man said, as if in his experience that’s what most people did. “She went last night: seven o’clock. Two suitcases and a taxi. Nice one, too: Mercedes.”
“I don’t suppose you know where she was going?”
The old man shook his head. “We don’t speak. She thinks I’m rude and I think she’s stuck up. Still, she won’t be living here much longer if I know anything about it, so I’ll get the last laugh.”
“She’s moving?” Annika asked.
“I’d bet my boat on it,” the man said, pursing his lips. “Got herself a rich boyfriend now, hasn’t she? And her sort aren’t the type to leave one like that on the line, if you know what I mean. He’ll be gaffed and into the barrel before he can blink, that’s my bet. You ever met her?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well if you had you’d know. She probably got him to take her to Barcelona or somewhere like that. I bet they’re sitting by the pool in the sunshine right now.” He cast a dubious, resigned eye at the grey cloud above. “Can’t say I blame them, though.”
“Maybe she went on her own,” Annika suggested, but the old man shook his head.
“Nah, he was with her: took her bags to the car.” He crushed out his cigarette in the plant pot and exhaled smoke. “He’d better get used to it, that’s all I’ll say. Her sort never carry their own bags.”
* * *
Back at the station Annika used Hjalti’s office to make phone calls, guessing that he wouldn’t particularly want her enquiries to be general knowledge just yet. After two conversations and making some quick notes she called Hentze himself.
“Hjalti, it’s me. Mikkjal Tausen isn’t answering his phone and I think he might have left the islands. He and his girlfriend went off in a taxi yesterday evening. Sigrun Ludvig had luggage, but I don’t know about him.”
“Have you checked with Atlantic?” Hentze asked.
“Yeh, they weren’t on the last flight yesterday or any today, but the Norröna left last night, heading for Hirtshals. It’s due in tomorrow at ten. I’m waiting for the Smyril Line to call me back when they’ve checked the passenger list.”
On the other end of the line Hentze thought for a moment. He was leaving the outskirts of Ry.
“Okay, listen,” he said. “I’m following another lead right now, but if Tausen is on the Norröna there’s nothing we can do for a bit. If he isn’t, we may need to put out an alert on the islands, so will you bring Remi up to date on this? I might have some more information fairly soon. Tell him I’ll call when I know.”
“Okay, will do.”
Hentze rang off and refocused on the road for a moment, then glanced at the satnav. Ten minutes.
34
I HADN’T BEEN BACK TO THE BURIAL SITE SINCE I’D LEFT IT WITH Friis. Instead, when uniformed officers turned up to secure the area, I’d been directed to Henning Skov’s Portakabin office and was asked – politely – to wait. So I did, for over an hour, watching the workmen being sent home and then the arrival of two more patrol cars and a forensic team’s van.
Then, later again, I saw Hentze arrive and get out of his car. He showed his ID to the uniformed officer who was monitoring arrivals and after that he was directed my way. I took my feet off a desk and swivelled my chair as he opened the office door and came in.
“Hey,” he said, taking a second to look around and see we were alone. “So, you found something, eh?” It was the obvious conclusion from what was outside.
“Not me personally, but yeah,” I said, standing up.
My legs had got stiff so I told him the basics of what had been found while I paced a little to restore circulation. I’d got as far as describing the burial site and Jeppe’s excavation when Friis opened the office door and stepped inside.
I made the introductions, but left it to them to work out in Danish where each of them stood in terms of rank, jurisdiction and priority of cases. At a guess and from his reaction, Friis was outranked, but all the same he was on home turf and Hentze seemed content to let that hold sway.
“Okay,” Friis said, getting down to business. “Before they were sent home the workmen who found the remains confirmed that it was their own idea to dig by the lake. Because you had taken an interest in the place they were suspicious about it, but they also had the belief that it would be hard to persuade anyone else to look closer.”
He obviously thought I was responsible for giving them that impression, although he didn’t seem inclined to debate how true it might be. Instead he made a gesture to start fresh, from the beginning.
“So, can we go back to the most basic facts now?” he said. “Can you tell me why you think there is a connection between this place and whatever was done here, and the case on the Faroes? It’s not just because in both places bodies
had been covered over with ashes, is it?”
I glanced at Hentze, but when he showed no sign of wanting to cut in I said, “No. That’s one common element, but I think there could be another connection. A Faroese man known as Mickey worked at Vesborggård House in 1976. That’s two years after the murders in the Faroes.”
“So he’s killed in both places? That’s what you think?” Friis said.
I shook my head. “No, I’m not making any conclusions, just noting the shared elements between the two cases.”
“And your mother would be another one, is that right?”
“Possibly, yes,” I acknowledged. “She knew the man, Mickey. Thea Rask told me that this morning, before I came here. And of course, my mother and Mickey were both Faroese.”
At some point I knew Friis would want to talk about Thea Rask in more detail, but it was too soon for that. Instead he turned to Hentze. “Can you confirm any of this?”
Hentze gave it some thought, or at least gave the impression that he was considering the full scope of the question. In reality I had the feeling he was already ahead of the game and was weighing up several factors of which neither Friis nor I were aware.
“Yes, to a certain extent,” he said in the end. “We have two murder victims on the Faroes: a woman and her daughter, killed in 1974. They lived at a commune before they died, so I came to Denmark to interview people who knew them from there. However, as far as I know there is nothing to connect our victims to this place more than Jan has already said. There may be similarities in the way one of our victims was buried, but without more details…” He shrugged.
“And you haven’t heard of this Faroese man called Mickey in your investigation?” Friis asked. “You don’t know who he is?”
Hentze shook his head sombrely. “No, but I’ll see if we can find out.”
“Okay,” Friis said with a nod. “In that case all we know for a fact is that there is a body here. It may be Inge-Lise Hoffmann, but until we have forensic results I don’t think we can say any more, so I don’t think there’s any point in guessing whether one case connects to another, do you?” He was asking Hentze. I was out of the equation for the moment.
