The Running Girl

by Sara Blaedel

  Jonas sat with his eyes closed, carried away by the music. When the pastor had spoken about Signe’s meaningless and all-too-early death, tears had run down the boy’s cheeks. Louise had squeezed his hand and passed him a pack of tissues.

  When the cellist’s last notes faded away, the church filled with a heavy silence. The silence remained until the pastor stood up from his chair beside the altar and walked over to toss dirt on the coffin. The dirt settled on the lid, and his words filled the room again.

  The choir began the next hymn, and the voices in the church quickly followed along. But this time it was harder to focus on the words in the hymnal—the sound of sniffles and the children’s deep sobs took the place of the words and blended in with the song.

  Louise stopped trying to sing. She cried quietly and was deeply moved. Swept away by the atmosphere and Britt, who cried despairingly and stretched her arms pitifully toward Signe’s white coffin. Ulrik put his arm around his wife’s shoulder. The parents sat close together, and Louise thought that for at least a moment they ought to have the church and coffin to themselves.

  After the pastor spoke the final words, a string quartet came forward. Two violins, a viola, and a cello. As the musicians readied themselves, Britt’s tense body relaxed a little. Her dark pageboy hair fell to the side as she laid her head against Ulrik’s shoulder; she closed her eyes to the notes of Bach’s “Air on the G String.”

  After that, the strings glided over Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus” and the organ followed along. Halfway through the piece, Ulrik stood up and signaled to the pallbearers. Trailed by classical music, they bore Signe’s coffin out to the hearse.

  “God, that music was beautiful,” Jonas said as they walked to the car.

  Louise looked at him. Jonas was so different from what she was used to with Camilla’s son, who was the same age. While Markus was mostly into rap, hip-hop, and computer games, Jonas was absorbed in books, listened to instrumental music, and played the guitar. He was more introverted than Markus, and he focused on the things that interested him, didn’t jump restlessly from one thing to the other. He loved, for instance, lying on his bed and reading books—could do it for hours.

  “Do you want to drive over there? Or would you rather go home?”

  Britt and Ulrik had invited family and friends to a reception at their house.

  “The others are going,” said Jonas. Louise decided they should drive out to Strandvænget.

  * * *

  Candles lined the entire length of the garden path, and an older woman in a dark blue dress stood receiving guests and taking their coats as they arrived. In the sitting rooms, all the candlesticks were lit, and two hostesses went around pointing everyone to the glasses and drinks that had been set out.

  The same dark red roses that had lain on the coffin were used for decoration, only in smaller numbers, like a little thread still tied to Signe, whose body was on its way to the crematorium.

  Louise and Jonas went into the living room.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” Britt said.

  She smiled sadly, but her eyes were clear and she’d touched up her makeup.

  The house was beginning to fill with people. Their voices sounded muffled, as if they’d been wrapped in a blanket.

  “There’s wine and water, and sandwiches are coming soon,” said Britt.

  She smiled at a young couple as they came through the door.

  “This is Signe’s cousin,” she said, introducing the girl. Then she showed them to the drinks table.

  Louise was beginning to turn, but Britt reached out her hand and stopped her.

  “Do you know if they’ve found the boys?”

  Louise shook her head.

  “Not yet. At least, I haven’t heard anything.”

  She understood Britt’s disappointment. A week ago, she and her daughter were putting the finishing touches on the party. Today they were holding a funeral. Britt needed to put the pieces together before she could even begin to deal with what had happened.

  In the music room, the string quartet from the church was starting to unpack their instruments and set up next to Britt’s beautiful grand piano. There was an empty space where Signe’s cello had stood the last time Louise was here.

  “I carried it up to her bedroom. I couldn’t bear to look at it every time I walk by,” Britt whispered.

  A tear fell as she stood watching the instrumentalists, who were ready to start.

  “When Signe was little, she’d lie on the floor under the piano while I practiced. And she started playing herself when she was only four.”

  She grasped Louise’s arm and leaned into her.

  “I just can’t understand it. When I came home from the hospital and was getting dressed for church, I thought I heard her cello. I hadn’t been home since we’d left for the sailing club, and the whole time I thought, she’s still here. Her sounds, her smell. Her presence. I can feel her, and her room’s the way it was when we left on Saturday afternoon. By the way, Jonas forgot his sweater. It’s on her bed.”

  Louise took her hand, which was still holding her arm. Britt shook her head despondently.

  “It’s driving me crazy. My body aches for her, and at the same time I know she’s never coming back. I feel completely empty. It’s as if missing her has taken the place of what used to be in my body. It’s true what they say, that a mother feels it physically when she loses her child. The most important part of me has been amputated.”

  Louise nodded and gave her a look of sympathy. Even though she’d never given birth to a child or lost one, she understood what Britt meant.

  From the living room came the sound of a glass being clinked. Ulrik stood between two tall glass doors that went out to the terrace. His shirt was untucked on one side. He looked out over his guests and waited until he had everyone’s attention.

  “It is so terribly sad for us to be gathered here today,” he began.

  Tears swelled in his eyes. He took a deep breath and held it for a moment.

  “But we are very happy and grateful to you for being with us as we say good-bye to our dear, sweet Signe.”

  Britt walked up and stood beside her husband.

  “Sometimes there is no justice,” he said as he took his wife’s hand. “Unbearable things happen, and the world falls to pieces. That happened to us last Saturday. But Signe will always be in our hearts. Let’s toast to her, and to the joy of life and the energy she was so full of. It will help us to remember her and all the good times we were able to have with her. Thank you so much, dear friends, for coming. Now we’ll have some music, and in a moment a little food will be brought in.”

  Around the room, people nodded to one another as the musicians began to play.

  The lovely sounds made the small hairs on the back of Louise’s arm stand up.

  17

  Louise nearly lost her patience on Monday afternoon as she sat waiting to see how long five minutes could take. It had already been close to twenty since Hans Suhr had said he’d be back in five. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall. Her shoulders ached from sitting at her desk all day.

  After lunch, Mikkelsen had called and said that no one in the prostitution racket knew of Nick Hartmann. She didn’t really believe that. At any rate, not in the part controlled by the bikers, and they ran more than a few brothels in Copenhagen. By reading between the lines, she’d figured out that it must be the women themselves—at least one woman at each location—whose trust Mikkelsen had won. Because, of course, it was obvious the men behind the scenes wouldn’t talk with the police, nor would they let their women.

  She started to think of Camilla and Markus, who were driving along the Oregon coastline in torrential rains.

  Camilla had sent an e-mail the day before, saying she’d written a little with Britt.

  “She told me about the funeral. I just can’t believe that sweet little Signe is gone. But I’m glad that Ulrik sees that this is a time he needs to be th
ere for his wife. If they can just support each other, then they’ll make it through the grief. Britt and Signe were very close. She lived for her daughter, so she must be feeling unbelievably empty suddenly. Poor, poor them. Damn, it’s killing me.”

  She’d also written how she and Markus had gone out to scream at the ocean.

  We pulled into a rest area on the edge of the coast. I had no idea how big the waves were—they roiled and roared, and we had to yell to hear each other. Markus can’t quite wrap his head around the fact that Signe really won’t be there when we come back home. It’s almost too much for him. It’s as if he can’t completely understand that a child could die that way. He knows how Jonas lost his dad, but I don’t think he can explain to himself how a child can die before her parents. And maybe it’s both healthy and natural to think that way. But it’s gotten inside of him and become hard for him to manage, and I understand it. Feel sort of the same way myself. It’s so completely meaningless.

  Yesterday when we pulled off to the side to stretch our legs, I walked all the way out to the edge of a cliff and looked straight down at the chasm, and it was so engrossing that for a moment I wanted to lean forward and take off. Take a bungee jump without a harness. Then, out of nowhere, I heard Markus yell. He yelled at the waves with a voice and a force I’d never heard before.

  Afterward he smiled and claimed that it helped with what was hurting him inside. So, every time we come to a scenic overlook, we drive off to the side and yell at the waves. Last time we nearly scared the life out of a pair of motorcyclists.

  “Tell me, are you sitting there taking a nap on my sofa?”

  Hans Suhr laughed from his door, and Louise tried to hide how he’d both given her a shock and caught her dozing in his office.

  She got up and pulled a chair over to his desk.

  “I’ve gone through Nick Hartmann’s bank statements and looked over the tax returns that SKAT sent over, and none of that really fits together. At least the way I read it,” she said.

  The autumn sun was right in Louise’s eyes. She had to keep adjusting her position in her chair until Suhr went over and closed the blinds, casting darkness over the office.

  He sat back down.

  “And?” he asked.

  “There’s an imbalance between his earnings and his expenses.”

  Louise passed the tax papers across the desk to him.

  “His income doesn’t square with his high standard of living.”

  “What did he do for a living?”

  “He was a shipping agent at a company down on Havnegade. Shipping Link International. He’d been with them for eight years in the same position. Never took advantage of extra training or internal hiring.”

  Hans Suhr took hold of the papers and reached around for his glasses. He turned on his desk lamp and took a closer look at the numbers.

  “400,000 kroner in annual income,” he read and did some figuring. “That’s almost 34,000 a month. Well, that’s not too bad, is it?”

  Louise shook her head. That wasn’t bad at all. In fact, it rounded up to ten thousand more than she brought home, without adjusting for the unequal hours.

  “No, but it’s all relative,” she said.

  She pointed to the bank statement.

  “If you have yearly expenses of a million kroner for two cars and a duplex in Amager, then 400,000 before taxes is like a snowball in hell.”

  Suhr nodded.

  “What about his wife? Does she have capital?” he asked and lifted his eyes from the paper.

  “Mie has a freelance position at a drawing office, but right now she’s on maternity leave and doesn’t make any money. In the periods when she was working, her income was around 20,000, so that’s still not enough to get them up to the level they’re living at. Other than that, she doesn’t have any income.”

  Suhr reached for the bank statement and passed his eyes over the figures.

  “Have you talked with Business Affairs? Do we know if he had a company on the side?”

  Louise shook her head.

  “From his statement, you can see there’s been a pretty large amount going into his account on a regular basis. 40,000 to 60,000, sometimes more. It seems like they’re making up for the negative balance that keeps growing all the time.”

  As Louise talked, the lieutenant drew boxes on the back of an envelope. At the very top he’d written “Nick Hartmann,” and above the boxes he’d written “Income” and “Expenses.”

  “And where did that money come from?”

  “From one of his other accounts.”

  She gave that some thought before continuing.

  “And some of the money was deposited in cash in smaller amounts, so no one in the bank would be suspicious.”

  “Absolutely,” Suhr exclaimed, irritated.

  He tossed his pen on the desk.

  “It’s obvious he was up to something,” Louise said. “But it doesn’t appear to be either drugs or prostitution. He dealt with the bikers, but we still haven’t found out what the connection was.”

  “We damned well better find out what he’s been up to. That is, if we want to have any hope of finding the motive behind the shooting.”

  Louise nodded.

  She’d just about gotten the lieutenant pointed in the direction she wanted.

  “Don’t you think we should ask Fraud to take a look at this?” she asked.

  Her own training in financial crime, she admitted, didn’t go much past debit card fraud.

  “Yes,” Suhr said. “And I know just who to ask.”

  * * *

  When Louise came back to her office, she had a message.

  “Call Bellahøj Station —ext. 11-118.”

  A younger woman answered, and it took a moment before the officer remembered why Louise Rick had been asked to contact the station.

  “Are you the mother of one of the children from the party at the sailing club?”

  “Foster mother,” Louise corrected.

  Then she asked if anything had happened, if they’d found the boys.

  “What’s your name?” the woman asked, still a bit puzzled.

  “Louise Rick. I’m related to Jonas Holm, who attended the party.”

  Related, what a damned strange way of distancing herself.

  “OK,” the woman finally said.

  She made a sound like she was getting her papers in order.

  “We would like to come by and talk with your son sometime in the afternoon. Will you be home?”

  “Have you found out who they are?” Louise asked.

  When the woman evaded her question, saying that unfortunately she couldn’t speak to that, Louise became irate.

  “Yes, by God you can speak to that. Jonas was at the party, and one of his best friends died out there. What the hell do you mean, you can’t speak to that?”

  The young woman suddenly became shrill.

  “We are holding a police investigation…”

  “Forget it,” Louise exclaimed.

  She was suddenly very aware of what it was like to be sitting on the other side of the desk. The side where the witnesses usually sit.

  “Just come. We’re home by five o’clock.”

  “We have some photos we’d like Jonas Holm to look through.”

  “That’s fine. We’ll be there,” she said.

  She looked at her watch. All of a sudden, she was busy.

  18

  I’m telling you, Egon!”

  Louise heard Yvonne’s voice from the TV in the living room. She tossed her bag in the entryway and went in to say hi.

  Jonas sat on the sofa with his legs tucked up underneath him and his eyes on the TV screen. The Olsen Gang Goes Berserk. Louise remembered the scene where Dynamite Harry sat in the back of a beer truck in high spirits after having blown a hole through a wall into a cold storage room.

  Jonas reached for the remote and was about to turn it off.

  “Go ahead and keep watching,” she said quickly.
“But I got a call from Bellahøj. They want to come by and show you some photos. It sounds like they’ve found the boys.”

  A worried looked passed over his face.

  “What if I can’t recognize them?”

  “Then just say so. And if you’re in doubt, there’s nothing wrong with that, either. You should only point out the people you’re sure of.”

  Louise smiled at him. She could tell how nervous he was.

  He shut off the film and looked at her seriously.

  “Jonas, there’s no reason to get worked up. We don’t know if the police have found the right people. But if it’s not them, then they’ll keep looking and come by again when they’ve found them.”

  He nodded, but just then the intercom buzzed and a twitch went through his body.

  They stood out on the landing and waited patiently for the officer to make it up to the fourth floor. Louise recognized him. It was the same one who’d been with Britt in the ambulance. She smiled at him as he rounded the last set of stairs, and nodded admiringly when it was clear he wasn’t out of breath from the climb. He offered her his hand and introduced himself as Kent.

  She suggested they sit in the kitchen.

  “I’d like you to look at some pictures with me,” the officer told Jonas after they’d sat down.

  Jonas nodded and leaned forward in his chair as Kent took an envelope out of his inside pocket.

  “How did you find them?” Louise asked.

  She’d gone over to the kitchen counter and started cutting up root vegetables.

  “We’ve been in touch with several of the boat owners who have docks down at the harbor. They told us about a boathouse out on South Pier, where a bunch of older boys hang out. There’d been a lot of trouble from them several times over the summer, and they’d been accused of stealing beer and liquor from boats—which they certainly did. But they were never reported for the thefts.”

  The officer laid the photos out on the table, and immediately Louise saw that Jonas recognized several of the faces. Without hesitation, he pointed out five of the eight portraits. One of them he placed in front of the officer.