The Running Girl

by Sara Blaedel

  “He’s the one who hit and kicked Signe’s mom,” he said.

  He turned his eyes away from the photo, which showed a big guy with closely trimmed blond hair and a big tattoo on one side of his neck.

  “Thomas Jørgensen is nineteen,” her police colleague said. He nodded and looked over at Louise. “You can go into Headquarters and look him up. And believe me, he’s been violent before. He lives in a youth home on Gammel Kalkbrænderivej.”

  “What’s he done?” Louise asked, making use of the way he spoke to her as a colleague.

  “Some vandalism. There’s an ongoing case against him where the damage claim has gone up to around 250,000 kroner. He spent his early teenage years in Sønderbro and several other locked facilities for juveniles, and he’d just barely arrived in Copenhagen when he and a pal were put in jail for a brutal attack on a father who was on his way into McDonald’s with his seven-year-old daughter. The father was in a coma for a week, then died of his injuries. That was four years ago, but Thomas Jørgensen is back again.”

  Louise went over to the table and sat down. She wanted to pull Jonas close to her, but didn’t while the officer was there.

  “How old are these guys?” she asked.

  She was having a hard time judging from their buttoned-up faces. She guessed the photos were taken during the interrogation at the police station—maybe some of them were from an earlier date, if they’d been in trouble with the police before.

  “Between seventeen and nineteen. As I said, they’re already in our database with various sentences on the record. They’re a bunch of asshole punks trying to be as bad as bikers, but not quite making it.”

  “What do they say?”

  “Nothing.”

  No, of course, they didn’t say anything, a bunch of biker wannabes, Louise thought. It made her feel irritated.

  A dark-haired kid stared out of one of the photos, his wispy hair tied up in a ponytail that came to the collar of his sweatshirt. His left ear was pierced and he had a jagged birthmark on his cheek.

  “Peter Nymann is in our books for violent assault and for breaking and entering. From earlier cases, we know he runs errands for the bikers. That is, when he’s not wasted on pot and beer. I think mostly he works for them for the money, but he’s definitely dreaming about rising in their ranks. As of now, I don’t think he’s qualified, not when it comes to brains or the power to keep his emotions in check.”

  “He’s the one who ran after Signe,” Jonas whispered.

  Kent nodded and pushed the last three photos farther up the table.

  “Sebastian Styhne,” he said.

  He pointed to a blond-haired kid who looked as hardened as the first two.

  “His father owns a café down in New Harbor and is pretty flush with cash.”

  He looked slightly younger than the others, his hair was medium length and wavy, and the only thing that kept him from looking like the boy next door was a large spiderweb tattooed all the way around his neck.

  “We don’t have any violent offense priors on him, but he’s been in several times for selling pot and speed, both of which he also uses.”

  Kent told her the boy had tattoos all over his body.

  “Like a wetsuit he stepped into,” he said.

  “You didn’t make him take his clothes off, did you?” Louise asked.

  “No way,” the young officer laughed. “I saw the ones on his arms—those go all the way to his wrists like sweater cuffs—and then he pulled up his pant legs to show me it was the same thing there. I didn’t see the rest, but I trust him when says they’re full body.”

  “Maybe one of the tattoo artists down in New Harbor gets free meals at his dad’s café in exchange for the artwork,” Louise said.

  She thought it had to be damned awful for a mother to give birth to such a lovely boy, who then chooses to cover his whole body in permanent ink.

  Jonas kept his eyes on the last two pictures.

  “Jón Vigdísarson is seventeen and lives with his mother on Strand Boulevard.”

  The boy had thick, dark hair, nice facial features, and black eyes that were standoffish and hard in an almost unnatural manner given his age.

  “Car theft and break-ins.”

  “And he’s seventeen,” exclaimed Louise.

  The officer nodded.

  “Last time he was taken in he had stolen goods in a stolen car—booze and cigarettes from a Spar convenience store that had been broken into.”

  The officer said that the Icelandic boy was the only one who’d confessed to being at the party.

  “But he claims they were invited. By Signe!”

  “That’s a lie,” Jonas blurted.

  The officer nodded. The others, he said, wouldn’t say a word.

  “But they were there!”

  Jonas stared at the officer.

  “I recognize them.”

  “That’s what several of your classmates say, too.”

  The officer pushed the photo aside and introduced the last one.

  He was a big, strong guy heavily tattooed on his very muscular arms. Steroid-type who probably has a permanent address at one of the fitness centers, thought Louise.

  “Kenneth Thim is studying to be a mechanic, and several nights a week he works as a bouncer at a nightclub in the inner city. We have him in our books, too, for just about everything—violence, assault, breaking and entering. He’s also hoping to cut his teeth with the bikers, and he’s ice cold. He doesn’t give a shit what gets in his way. But it doesn’t look like he was violent at the party.”

  Jonas shook his head, and Kent cleared his throat.

  “Where’s the boathouse in relation to the sailing club?” Louise asked.

  She watched Jonas stand up, a blank stare on his face. He walked into his room and closed the door behind him.

  “Could those boys see that there was a party going on?”

  Her colleague shook his head.

  “The boathouse where they hang out is farther down in Svanemølle Harbor. In by the warehouses where the big ships come in. But we think they might have gone out looking for booze or cigarettes. By that point at night, many people had gone home from their boats, so maybe they noticed the party.”

  She nodded while he talked, thinking it sounded likely.

  “Have you spoken with Signe’s parents?” she asked.

  “Not yet. I’m heading out there when we’re finished here. I just want to be sure we’ve identified the boys correctly before I show them the photos.”

  Considerate, thought Louise, a little more favorably disposed to the young officer.

  * * *

  Root vegetables in the oven. When Louise was a girl, she’d hated it when her mother made that kind of dinner, and especially when she’d sprinkle on a thick layer of parsley from the garden without asking if anyone would rather not have that on theirs. Now she loved slow-roasted celery, beets, parsnips, and carrots, but every time she set them on the table, she saw a little of her mother in herself and didn’t like it. The way she saw herself, there was still a fair distance between her parents out in the country and her, living in her own apartment in Frederiksberg.

  Her mother was a potter and spent all her waking hours in an apron with clay in her hair. She was opinionated and flighty compared to Louise’s father, who sat quietly absorbed in his books or concentrating on typing. He was a well-known ornithologist, and for most of her upbringing his focus had been somewhere other than on Louise and her little brother. Most of his free time he spent with binoculars around his neck. His work hours were with the Danish Ornithology Society, where his duties included bird conservation and protection, as well as editing the society’s journal.

  Tired, tired, tired—she’d gotten so tired of her parents not having normal jobs with normal work hours. It had been an absolute pain in the neck when her father would pull his kids out of bed at four in the morning because they needed to hustle off for bird-watching in the family’s old Simca, without it
ever occurring to him that his children didn’t share his enthusiasm. Neither her mother nor her father ever felt the need to keep up with the neighbors or friends when it came to new cars or home renovations. They kept their car until it had worn out its service and didn’t have any life left in it, and Louise had preferred to bike rather than be driven to school, just to avoid the grins from her classmates.

  Since Jonas had moved in, she’d been thrown back to her childhood many times. She drove him to parties in her old worn-out Saab; as long as it started up and got her between points A and B, there was no reason to replace it. And now, here she was roasting root vegetables in her oven. The only mitigating factor was that, unlike her mother, she hadn’t drowned everything in parsley.

  Damn, she thought, and put hot pads on the table. But she sure as hell wasn’t the boy’s mother, and Jonas certainly didn’t seem ashamed of her. She just hadn’t figured out how the change had happened—when, precisely, had she started to be like her parents?

  She shook her head and called for Jonas.

  “Dinner’s ready!”

  She used two pot holders to pull the dish out of the oven.

  After they’d eaten, she wanted to drive out to Strandvænget to see how Britt and Ulrik were doing, now that the police had identified the boys. Maybe there were some questions they hadn’t asked when the officers from Bellahøj had been there. Not that she thought she could answer them, but maybe she could help prepare them for what would happen now and which charges the police would be able to make.

  Jonas had planned a sleepover at Lasse’s, and she’d promised to drive him down to Peblinge Dosseringen. She could keep going to Svanemølle from there.

  19

  The Golf was there. The other spot, where Ulrik parked his big Audi, was empty, but there was a light on in the living room. Louise parked along the sidewalk and called from her cell phone. She didn’t want to show up completely unannounced.

  “If you can stand me in casual clothes and looking like a mess, then you’re more than welcome,” said Britt, clearly surprised when Louise invited herself in for coffee.

  The outdoor candles were still lined up along the garden path—no one had picked them up after the funeral. The roses seemed overpowering now that the rooms were empty, and their scent was stronger and constantly reminded one of their presence.

  “I love roses,” Britt confessed when they sat down. “Especially the ones I have out in the garden.”

  The enormous dining table overflowed with photographs. Small and big, from the time when pictures had to be developed and were delivered on paper in an envelope. Signe as a baby, as a toddler taking her first step, and as a four-year-old sitting on a bench with her long red hair braided down both sides of her head and holding a small cello.

  “Memory Lane,” Britt said sadly.

  She gestured with her hand.

  “I’m preparing myself for several trips down it.”

  Music played softly in the background, classical notes that gently filled the room and made it feel pleasant and secure.

  Louise nodded to the offer of a cup of green tea. While Britt was out in the kitchen putting the water on, she let her eyes scan the living room.

  “Ulrik is down at Møn’s Cliff. I convinced him to go,” Britt said with a little smile. “He’s absolutely smitten with hang gliding and paragliding. He even teaches it. He claims it’s like meditation. He wasn’t much into going away—he’s been home pretty much the whole time since the accident. But I don’t have anything against being alone; I’m used to it. And it’s so good for him to be out in the fresh air. It usually relaxes him a little when he’s stressed. Do you know anything about paragliding?”

  “Not the least, I don’t even know the difference between the two,” said Louise.

  They settled into easy chairs in the sitting room in the back.

  Britt shook her head.

  “No, it doesn’t mean much to me, either. When you paraglide, you’re in a harness under a kind of parachute, and when you hang glide you’re lying practically in the air under the parachute. It’s not for me, but he loves it.”

  Louise smiled at her.

  “Back when Ulrik and I were dating, almost twenty years ago, he’d just started parachute diving, and he was one of the first to try bungee jumping off bridges. Then one thing followed the other, and if I’d have known how it was going to turn into a passion I probably would have reconsidered a time or two. But he’s bitten by it, not least of all by the adrenaline rush he gets when he free-falls.”

  She pretended to shudder and said that her husband had a glider plane parked up in Allerød.

  “But I forbade him from taking Signe up with him. I’d heard about how they’re always crashing, and the thought of it made me sick. I have no idea how it happened, but apparently, airplanes are the phobia I’ll have to go through life with.”

  Louise didn’t know much about Ulrik Fasting-Thomsen, other than what she’d read in the papers every time he’d been involved in a big financial takeover. As she remembered it, he was also an investment consultant to Frederik Sachs-Smith, the eldest of the three siblings from the family dynasty the media were currently spewing about in glowing hot bits and pieces, like lava from an erupting volcano. The scandal had affected business life, not least the Danish exchange market. Throughout the gossip world, it drew as much attention as if the family who owned Lego had hung its dirty laundry out for public view, or a political family who had started to strip in public.

  But Frederik Sachs-Smith had apparently been smart enough to get himself out of the family enterprise, long before his siblings started their greedy vendetta against their parents. In that way, he’d avoided being fodder for the papers’ front pages or contributing to all the gossip that filled workplace lunchrooms everywhere, and Ulrik had avoided being pulled down in the fall.

  The tea was set on the table in a heavy stoneware pot, which Britt carried with both hands. She still had a bandage over her cheekbone and said that later in the week she was going down to her own doctor to have the stitches removed.

  She poured them each a cup.

  “The police were here today,” she said.

  Louise nodded.

  “I thought I recognized several of them in the pictures, but then suddenly I wasn’t so sure. It’s all a bit blurry to me. I can remember when you all arrived. And the sailing trip. I can remember sitting down and eating, and that the students from the music school played for Signe.”

  Her jaw protruded when she clenched her teeth, trying to keep from crying. Just then, the room became quiet. The CD was over.

  “After the food, she opened her presents and was so happy. Everyone helped clean up and push the tables to the side so they could dance.”

  For a short-lived moment, a smile played in Britt’s eyes. But then, like a heavy lily, she suddenly bowed her head to her chest.

  “I was out in the kitchen getting chips when they came. When I came in, they were standing there. One of them was heading around behind the bar, where we had our soft drinks. At first, I thought they were some kids Signe knew and said hi to them!”

  Britt closed her eyes a moment.

  “But then I could tell that the children were unsettled, and no one said anything. So, I asked the boys what they wanted. ‘Party!’ one of them yelled and wanted to know where we kept our booze. But there wasn’t any. A couple of the others walked over to the gift table, and that’s when I asked them to leave.”

  “Were they behaving in a threatening way at that point?” asked Louise.

  Britt shook her head.

  “No, and it still hadn’t occurred to me that they could be unpleasant. I thought they’d go once they’d seen we didn’t have any beer or alcohol. Two of them came in with some of the sushi we’d taken out to the kitchen, and I told them they were welcome to it. But suddenly I saw that the one behind the bar had taken my bag and stood with my purse in his hand, and I heard Signe tell them to leave her presents alone. It
was at that moment that I yelled for them to leave, or else I’d call the police. After that I can’t really remember any more.”

  Louise let her cry. She thought it must have been at that point that Jonas had called her.

  As they sat, Louise’s eyes rested on a tea candle that was about to burn out. There was artwork hanging on the walls, and in one of the corners of the room stood a tall, slender sculpture in bronze. The door to the music room was open, and there were candles beside the grand piano.

  “Tell me about your music career,” Louise said.

  She poured more tea into their mugs.

  “What should I say?” asked Britt, suddenly embarrassed.

  “Did you know Ulrik when you started to play?”

  A fleeting smile passed across her lips.

  “I’m a Suzuki child, just as Signe was. In fact, I was one of the first to be trained at The Danish Suzuki Institute, where it has a lot to do with parents going to the lessons with their children and supporting them. It’s a special method that was introduced in this country in 1972, when I was four. I can remember my classmates calling me ‘Classical pig.’ That’s more than twenty-five years ago.”

  She told her that Signe had also started as a four-year-old.

  “You learn to perform, and playing by memory becomes a natural part of your education. But it all happens on the child’s own terms. It’s not like parents standing on the sidelines and pushing them. They have to play because they want to. Signe was accepted into their chamber orchestra. But when I went there, I played the piano so I was placed with a smaller ensemble.”

  She stood up and went over to the sound system that hung on the wall. A moment later they heard the classical notes again. She turned it down a little.

  “Brahms Trio in B major,” she said and sat down.

  “How did you meet Ulrik? Was he interested in music, too?”

  Her laughter sounded surprised and lighthearted.

  “Are you insane? He can’t tell the difference between a violin and a bass! It was completely banal how we met—in a bar in the city. It was the summer I started at the Conservatory. I was nineteen and had just finished high school music training. And Ulrik is three years older than me and had studied economics at the University of Copenhagen. He was working on his graduate degree at that point.”