The Fire Pit

by Chris Ould

  That seemed to satisfy him a little more. “Okay then,” he said. “So say that is all true and that, if she hadn’t been rescued, Thea Rask would have been killed and buried as well. Would you say that the man who did it was a serial killer?”

  I sat back with my almost-cold gin and made a show of thinking it over. I wasn’t sure how we’d jumped from considering the crimes at Vesborggård House to talking about serial killings but Friis clearly had something on his mind.

  “Well, I suppose it depends on which definition of serial killer you use,” I said in the end. “If it’s just that there’s more than one victim, then yeah, you could say it, but it wouldn’t be my choice.”

  “You prefer the older definition?” he asked. “That between each victim there should be a return to normality for the killer – a ‘cooling-off’ period?”

  “I think it keeps things more manageable, yeah,” I told him. “If for no other reason than stopping the press going mad.”

  “So if there were other victims of the same man – later, with time in between – what would you say?”

  I could tell this wasn’t hypothetical now – at least, not for him. There’d already been a hint of it in the way he’d told me he wasn’t staying on the Vesborggård case, and now I was pretty sure I knew the reason for that.

  “Are there other victims?” I said.

  It was his cue, and now I’d provided it I saw him relax just a little.

  “Yeh, I think so,” he said leaning back by a fraction. “Do you know of Samuel Hallard, from the United States?”

  I did, but Hallard wasn’t someone you’d have come across unless you’d studied the subject. He’d never been charged and it wasn’t until after his death from a stroke that the Cleveland police had made a convincing case that Hallard had stalked and killed five people at intervals over nearly three decades. But what made Hallard exceptional – perhaps even unique – was the fact that he’d never been prevented from killing by imprisonment or circumstance; he simply chose not to kill for periods as long as ten years.

  “Yeah, I’ve read about Hallard,” I told Friis. “But he was unusual, maybe unique.”

  “Yes, very unusual.” Friis nodded, in full agreement. “But I don’t think he was the only one of his kind. I believe there is someone like Hallard killing in Denmark.”

  I raised an eyebrow, just a little. “Over what time frame?”

  He sat forward. “Until today I believed that the earliest case was in 1982 and that the latest was in January this year. There are eight murders I’m sure of and two more that might be connected.” He put a hand to the bag by his chair. “Can I show you?”

  * * *

  It was ironic really, given that at our first meeting I’d wanted to avoid giving Friis the impression that I was somewhere between sad and deluded. If I’d known he was one of those coppers who keeps a pet case in their desk I could probably have tackled things differently, then and now. As it was, though, I knew I was fresh meat – a virgin audience – and there was a lecture to come.

  Friis had a timeline on his laptop, neatly laid out with thumbnails, locations and dates. He moved through it with a familiarity that spoke of many careful hours in its making and what he told me had a semi-rehearsed, abridged air; as if he was well versed in which elements required detail and which could be abbreviated.

  “The earliest case was a fourteen-year-old girl named Nina Lodberg,” he said. “She was found in a lake two days after she was reported as missing, in 1982. She had been strangled with a rope, but not quickly. The post-mortem showed it was done at least three times while she was alive.”

  “Was there a sexual element?”

  “No, apparently not, and the investigation didn’t find any suspects. In the end it was left open.”

  He hovered the cursor over her photograph, then moved it away.

  “From then on there has been a killing every five to seven years. Twice there were two only a few weeks apart. I won’t take your time with every detail, and some elements change: the method of killing, and of course where they take place – but in all the cases there are three things in common. The first is that the killer spends time watching his victims and chooses carefully when to attack. The second factor is the age and the sex of the victims.”

  He changed the screen to show a column of faces. “They are always female and, except in one case, less than twenty years old. Like the first case, there is never any sexual contact but the third thing in common is that in the cases where it’s been possible to do a useful post-mortem, we find that each death was prolonged. There have been asphyxiations by strangling with a rope, a cloth or by hand; a stab wound; and three have died from an overdose of barbiturate. But whichever method is used there is always the impression that it has been… prepared. It’s as if whoever is committing these crimes needs to be sure he will get what he wants and after that he is usually not worried about hiding the body more than a little, sometimes not even that.”

  He paused and looked up from the screen. “The only time I think his plan has gone wrong is in a case from this year, near Billund. The victims – a mother and daughter – were at an isolated farmhouse, and when the woman’s ex-husband arrived unexpectedly the killer drove away in a van. Unfortunately, the husband didn’t see him, but in the upstairs of the house he found his wife dead from a single stab wound – the postmortem showed she had been drugged. His daughter was still alive, although she had been drugged, too, and placed on her bed naked, but nothing else had happened.”

  “What sort of drug was used, do you know?”

  “No, it was nothing the technical laboratory could identify from its traces. It had broken down in their bodies too quickly.”

  “And there was no other forensic evidence?”

  Friis shook his head. “No, very little, and nothing of use for identification.”

  Now that he’d laid out his stall he picked up his glass and took a drink, giving me time to assess what I thought.

  “How long have you been working on this?” I asked.

  “For a few years.” He said it as if it was an admission of weakness he’d rather avoid.

  “And you’ve told other people what you think?”

  “Yes, when it became clear,” he said with a nod. “But in Denmark we only have about forty-five murders a year, so the theory of a man who only kills when it suits him, and over so long… It’s not an easy idea to accept. Killers don’t hibernate for years at a time, do they? Only in the United States. Only Hallard.”

  For a moment his tone was sardonic, as if he was quoting what someone had said. Apart from his annoyance at Jeppe’s clumsy uncovering of the remains at Vesborggård House it was the only time I’d heard him sound any kind of emotion.

  “And now you think you need to go one step back even further – to 1976,” I said, because it was obviously the reason he’d come.

  “Yes, now I think so,” he said, decided. “In my research I thought it was unusual that the first killing in 1982 was so efficiently carried out, as if he was already familiar with what he should do. But if it was not his first killing – if he has done others before where he made mistakes or with different techniques… You understand what I mean? If the crimes near Vesborggård House in 1976 are actually the first time – or perhaps the second or third…”

  I could see him constructing the logic of that, and in a way I knew how he felt. But even so, I couldn’t buy it: not sight unseen and only on the basis of what he’d said. I had no way to assess whether his theory held any water, let alone up to the brim, and even beyond that I knew there was another factor at work. Thomas Friis was clearly an obsessive, and today he’d caught sight of a light at the end of the tunnel. He saw a chance to validate his theory and wanted me to add fuel to his fire.

  I took a drink, but by the time I lowered my glass I knew he’d read my thoughts because he’d stiffened a little.

  “So what can I tell you?” I asked, because it was the obvious question.r />
  “I’d like to know if you have any more information than you told me this afternoon,” he said. “I think there must be something else for Inspector Hentze to come all the way here.”

  It was too late to back-pedal on what had already been said so I opted for flatness instead. “Sorry; all I know is what I told you already,” I said. “The grave at the house may be similar to one in the Faroes, and there was a Faroese man at Vesborggård House in 1976.”

  “Ja. Yeh, Mickey,” Friis said, slightly impatient. “But do you have any better idea who he is now? Does Hentze?”

  I shook my head. “I haven’t spoken to him since this afternoon,” I said: easy because it was true. “But with only a first name to go on I wouldn’t think he knows any more now than he did before. Perhaps you should ask him.”

  I’d closed the door by saying that and Friis knew it. “Okay, yes, maybe that would be the best way,” he said with a note of acceptance.

  He put his laptop away and then got to his feet. I did the same.

  “You know, if this man Mickey can be seen as a suspect in the Faroes and at Vesborggård House, he must be more than sixty years old now,” Friis said. “And Samuel Hallard was sixty-eight when he died, which was five years after his last killing. You understand what I mean? I think he should be found before he disappears forever, so if you think of anything else…”

  “Sure, of course,” I told him.

  He nodded. “Okay. Tak for your help, then.”

  I accompanied him to the door, shook his hand and said godnat. I’d disappointed him, that much was clear, but he’d probably expected as much. He was smart enough for that.

  As I went back to my gin I thought about calling Hentze, just to forewarn him, but decided I wouldn’t. Hentze was canny enough to deal with Friis if the need arose, and if it did I couldn’t imagine he’d be in any hurry to complicate his case any further. By tomorrow he’d have Mikkjal Tausen to talk to, and if Mikkjal turned out to be Mickey from Vesborggård House I’d have my own questions. Until then there was little else I could do: only wait and follow Hentze back to the Faroes. It would make or complete a full circle, I guessed.

  38

  Saturday/leygardagur

  A SERIES OF TIME-LAPSE PHOTOGRAPHS OF TOVE HALD WOULD have shown sudden shifts in position followed by long periods of virtual stillness. She sat at the table in front of the night-dark window for a while, her only movement that of her fingers on the MacBook’s keyboard and track pad. Later she spent some time in the kitchen, standing at the counter with coffee and her phone. Later still she was back on the MacBook, this time lying on the sofa with her knees drawn up.

  From one web page to another, Tove followed a trail of hyperlinks to half a dozen different nursing forums, bookmarking, creating accounts for each one and then posting the same message in Danish and English: “Does anyone remember Vesborggård House? My grandmother Lene worked there in the 1970s and I would like to reunite her with her old colleagues while she can still remember them.”

  She’d thought quite hard about this message, trying to strike a similar tone to the one she had seen in other postings. In the end she still wasn’t fully convinced she had managed to sound approachable and friendly rather than too direct, but without Kjeld around to ask for an opinion she went ahead anyway.

  Once the message was posted she occupied herself with other things – there was no shortage of those – but every hour or so she went back to the websites to check for responses. She was aware that at this hour it was probably unlikely her message would be read. Normal people – at least those of an age to have been at Vesborggård House – probably didn’t go online after midnight.

  At just after one in the morning Kjeld came back to the flat, full of bonhomie and beer and with a girl whose pet name – Vivi – Tove thought unnecessarily childish. She didn’t say so, however. She was aware that Kjeld didn’t like her observations on the women he went with, so after a simple, “Hi,” Tove resumed her note making, putting on headphones about ten minutes later when Vivi’s climaxes proved to be as irritatingly girlish as her name.

  A couple of hours later and finally feeling sleepy, Tove got ready for bed, brushing her teeth as she made a final check on the nursing message boards via her phone. On the third one she found a response, left ten minutes before in English.

  Hi Tove1293. My mom, Sørine, was at Vesborggård in 1972 or 1973, I think. She was also a nurse (it runs in the family!). Unfortunately she has dementia now so her memory isn’t so good. She’s in a care home here in Vancouver but I have her treasured photo albums and I’m sure I’ve seen a picture of Vesborggård there. I will look and maybe I can send you a copy. Sylvie x

  Sitting on the edge of the bathtub, Tove wrote a reply, being careful to mimic the chatty tone, which wasn’t natural to her. Once she’d posted the reply she checked the rest of the websites, found nothing and so she went to bed, switching off her mind – if not her phone – instantly.

  She woke refreshed and without any prompting at five forty-five. By then Sylvie in Vancouver had sent her an email titled “Well what do you know?” with two attached photographs, which Tove examined closely on the screen of her MacBook while she ate toast and drank coffee in the kitchen.

  The Kodacolor images were faded around the edges but still clear; the first had the words “Vesborggård Hus, august ’73” written in biro in the margin beneath. The photo itself had been taken from some distance in order to accommodate approximately twenty people, standing on a lawn with part of a brick building behind them. Several of the women were dressed in nursing uniforms and most of the men were in suits or jackets and ties, but given the camera’s distance from its subjects their faces blurred when Tove took the magnification over 150 per cent.

  The second photograph was much clearer, however. Four smiling women filled the frame, all wearing white uniforms, arms around each other. In the margin under the picture four names were written in biro: Me, Lene, Anne and Stine.

  In her mind Tove compared the woman second from left in the photo to her memory of Lene Sønderby from the evening before. It was the same woman, Tove concluded after a full minute of study, and therefore Lene Sønderby had not told the truth when she’d claimed to have no knowledge of medical practices at Vesborggård House. Therefore she could say more.

  * * *

  At that time on Saturday morning there were only a few passengers on the outward-bound train to Humlebæk. The previous night’s rain and cold breeze had abated but when she turned into Lene Sønderby’s road Tove observed the damp leaves it had scattered along the pavement and over Lene Sønderby’s car. It didn’t seem to have moved since she left, which Tove took as further confirmation that the woman had simply been trying to get rid of her last night.

  At the front door Tove again pressed the bell, but this time she was prepared to wait. Both upstairs and down the curtains were still closed.

  She gave it two minutes, then pressed the bell button again. This time it prompted a muffled, incomprehensible voice from within and shortly afterwards the inner door of the porch opened. Through the small, pebble-glazed window Tove saw Fru Sønderby’s figure inside.

  “Yes, yes, I heard you the first time,” Lene Sønderby was saying irritably. “Who is it?”

  “Tove Hald,” Tove said. “I was here yesterday. The evening,” she added for clarification.

  There was a moment of silence, then Lene Sønderby spoke with a note of even firmer irritation. “What do you want at this time of the morning?”

  “I have a photograph I’d like you to look at,” Tove said. “I believe you are one of the people it shows at Vesborggård House. You were a nurse there, is that correct?”

  There was another pause, longer this time, but eventually there was the sound of a lock being turned and Lene Sønderby opened the door, just enough that she could look out. She wore a quilted dressing gown, tied firmly at the waist.

  “What on earth are you thinking, getting people out of bed at t
his hour?” she demanded.

  “I have a photograph I’d like you to look at,” Tove repeated. “I also have some more questions to ask you. May I come in?”

  “No, absolutely not. I’m not dressed, I haven’t had breakfast and—” Lene Sønderby gave up on listing the reasons why she couldn’t talk and instead gripped the edge of the door. “And besides, I can’t tell you anything more about Vesborggård House. Now, go away and leave me in peace.”

  “I think—” Tove began, but before she got any further Lene Sønderby closed the door with a thud.

  For a moment Tove considered the door, then raised a hand and rapped on the wood. “Fru Sønderby? I think you should know that the police have found a body at Vesborggård House – Fru Sønderby?”

  When Lene Sønderby opened the door again she seemed to be struggling to maintain the annoyance in her expression against a rising frown of concern. “A body? What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t have any more details,” Tove said. “Except that it may be a girl who disappeared in 1976.”

  “Well, I know nothing about it,” Fru Sønderby said regaining her irritated belligerence. “Why would that have anything to do with me?”

  “I didn’t say that it did,” Tove said matter-of-factly. “But it may have something to do with another person who was at Vesborggård House so I’d like you to look at this photograph and tell me who you can recognise.”

  As she said it Tove brought up her phone, but as soon as she saw it Lene Sønderby was already waving it away.

  “No, I refuse to be… to be accosted like this on my own doorstep. If you don’t go away now I will call the police. Do you hear? Go away!”

  “If you—”

  “No! Go away!”

  The last word was almost cut off by a second thud of the door, followed immediately afterwards by the sound of the lock being turned. A few seconds later the internal door closed, too, and now that Lene Sønderby’s figure was no longer visible inside, Tove accepted that there was no more to be gained here and turned away. She wondered briefly whether five past eight in the morning could be considered early, but supposed that it could if you wanted a reason to avoid telling the truth.