The Running Girl

by Sara Blaedel

  “So, you were together a pretty long time before you had Signe.”

  Britt nodded.

  “We didn’t think we could have children, but in a way, it turned out really well. I started with the introductory courses, which at that time was two years, and after that I had to go through another four years before I took my degree exam. Only then did I go into the soloist program. At that point I was in my midtwenties, and I couldn’t have played with a little child in my arms. It’s also very common for women to give up at that point. But I was completely focused on music and was so privileged to play my debut concert in Tivoli’s concert hall. We had Signe when I was twenty-nine, and that worked out well. I had energy for her and could take her with me when I played abroad. When I was on stage, she was looked after in the dressing room.”

  She sank into herself for a few seconds.

  “I’ve been lucky, been able to play concerts in Paris and in the golden hall in Vienna, even on a gorgeous Bösendorfer concert piano. And when I practiced here at home, Signe lay on her lamb’s wool blanket and listened.”

  “But you don’t play anymore?”

  She shook her head.

  “My hands won’t let me. It crept up slowly, and finally I had to stop. Now I teach as an associate professor at The Royal Danish Music Conservatory, and I have my private students on the side. They come here,” she said and nodded toward the music room.

  Louise glanced at the wall clock beside the sound system, and Britt quickly apologized for talking so much.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Louise, “I’m the one who asked you to.”

  She stood up to help carry the tea cups out to the kitchen. But something seemed to have changed with Britt.

  She stayed seated in her easy chair, sapped of energy, her gaze fastened to a spot behind the wall, far off.

  “Would you like more tea, or should I take the Thermos out with me?” Louise asked.

  Britt didn’t respond.

  Louise walked over and kneeled beside her chair.

  “Are you OK?”

  “I want to go to bed,” Britt said without shifting her gaze.

  Louise helped her stand up and walked with her arm in arm, unsure of what to do. It occurred to her that maybe Britt was taking sedatives, and now they’d worn off. But she had no idea whether the doctor had prescribed something like that when he released her, and she wasn’t going to intrude on her private affairs.

  “When is Ulrik coming home?” she asked.

  “He’ll be here soon. But I’m fine on my own until he comes.”

  She gripped Louise’s arm tightly and spoke while looking straight ahead. Her voice seemed strangely deep and dry, as if it emerged from someplace hidden behind her frail and feeble exterior.

  “They’re the ones who took her from me. Do you understand that?” she said. “If they hadn’t come and ruined everything, Signe would still be here.”

  She paused briefly.

  “But I’m the one who held a party for her. I could have done a lot of other things to celebrate, and then it never would have happened. I get that.”

  Louise was going to object, but Britt continued in her monotone voice.

  “I’ll never forgive them, and every single day I’ll hate them so much that I’m sure they’ll feel it, no matter how far away from me they are.”

  Suddenly her expression softened, turned apologetic, as if she’d frightened herself by how strongly the hatred had raged inside her.

  She smiled and shook her head. Then she thanked Louise for taking the time to look in on her.

  Louise gave her a quick hug and slipped her coat off the hanger. On her way out to the car, she took out her cell phone. She had just enough time to call Jonas and say good night before it was too late.

  Her phone showed a missed call and a message.

  She started the Saab and turned on the heat. Then she called her voice mail and pressed 1 for new messages.

  “Hi Louise. It’s Ulrik, Signe’s dad. I just heard that the police have found the boys and located the place where they hang out on the South Pier. You need to know that that boathouse belongs to a warehouse I own.”

  20

  The rain blasted the windshield, and the wipers ran on max. Markus sat with the big road map unfolded in front of him. His shoulders slouched, he was car sick, had a headache, but still he seemed to be commanding the car. They stopped at a thirteen-foot-high statue of the horrifyingly huge Big Foot. It was carved in wood and painted all ugly and clumsy, so any kid under five would burst into hysterical sobs at the sight of it.

  Camilla took out her camera.

  “Stand next to it so I can get your picture,” she yelled.

  “Mom, really. It’s pissing down rain, and I feel crappy. Can’t we just skip it?”

  “It’s just one picture, and it’ll only take a second. Then we can get something to drink, or ice cream if you’d rather have that.”

  Camilla had barely finished speaking when Markus turned his back to her and bent over to throw up. He stood with his hands on his knees and his head hanging down. Then his thin shoulders quivered with another wave of sickness.

  The rain was thick and heavy and drenched them. With one hand Camilla fished paper napkins out of her bag, and with the other she held his forehead.

  “Oh, sweetie, is it that bad?”

  When she asked him whether they should stop looking for the drive-through tree and concentrate on finding someplace to sleep, he looked at her morosely and nodded.

  Camilla got her thick sweater out of the back of the car and helped Markus take off his soaking sweatshirt. She set up water and napkins in the back seat of their Toyota, and after he crawled in she rolled up his jacket and tucked it under his head.

  She was suddenly aware of how mechanical their routine had become over the last two mornings. They ate breakfast and got out to the car, as if there was an appointment they had to make it to. It was hard to know what had happened to the happy, relaxed vacationers they’d imagined themselves being back when they planned their road trip down the West Coast of the U.S.A. Everything had become hectic and strained as they tried to find one sight after another.

  Now her son was sick and feeling shitty, and she hadn’t even noticed it. Because she’d been so eager to get Big Foot crossed off the list of things that their thick guide book told them they must see.

  She backed out slowly from the deserted parking lot, where they were the only tourists who braved the pouring rain. The souvenir shops were deserted, and they practically had the winding road through the woods to themselves.

  She sighed deeply and put the car’s automatic transmission into drive.

  * * *

  Turn left and then turn right, said the GPS, which she’d set to find a hotel in a city called Eureka. It was out on the coast, and Camilla knew nothing about it or its possible accommodations, so she followed the GPS-lady’s directions.

  Markus had fallen asleep in the back seat, pale and wet-haired.

  Lost and completely wrong. That’s what it felt like when she turned left and looked for the road that was supposed to go to the right. They’d landed in the middle of a worn-down residential neighborhood, and none of the little houses here made her think of a hotel or for that matter any kind of lodging.

  Dead end, no way to turn right—the GPS had gotten it wrong.

  She pulled off to the side of the road.

  Suddenly everything had started being about getting to the next point. That wasn’t at all what Camilla had had in mind when she dreamed of being on the road and seeing where it would take them.

  Everything they’d done over the last days had been damned unimportant, she thought and turned the car down the residential street. She’d put herself on autopilot so she could tune out. She’d simply followed the guide book’s sights and recommendations so she didn’t have to think of Signe and her poor parents.

  Now she was hunting around for a place to spend the night. Markus was sick, and for
the first time, it actually was important to get to a hotel so he could go to bed.

  “Shit,” she yelled and banged her hand on the steering wheel. She braked so hard that Markus nearly slid off the back seat.

  “Are we there?” he asked. He got up on his elbows and tried to look out the car windows, but a curtain of rain poured down.

  “Not yet. I can’t find the damned hotel,” she said.

  She started to laugh. She shut her eyes and took it all in.

  The rain thrashed the windshield, and suddenly the absurdity was perfectly clear. How she ran around trying pathetically to find inner peace, while everything around her crumbled. Trying to be whole and normal like before was a forced and useless effort, and right now it was about to keel over with her on board.

  There was no damned possible way to get away from the grief over Signe.

  She turned off the GPS and let the car coast forward. Markus lay back down again, not having the energy to contribute to her plans other than to say he wanted her to find them a bed and some peace and quiet soon so the pain in his head would go away.

  She drove back to the main road that ran through downtown, turned right toward the water, and came up to an old Victorian colossus that made her think of Harry Potter and the wizards’ school, Hogwarts. It had the same towers and spires. On a big sign, she read that lodging was available here. Lodging for men only. On the opposite side, there was smaller Victorian script in pink, but she sped up and drove past without reading it.

  One-way and back around and not a hotel in sight. She felt done in, and noticed how her blond hair fell in wisps around her face. For the last few days, she’d skipped makeup and really didn’t care. It had been one of her trademarks, but over here it didn’t really seem to matter. Day after day they sat in the car between five and six hours.

  Camilla was ready to give up when she finally saw a sign that looked promising. It said CARTER HOUSE on the three-story corner building, but she couldn’t see if it was a restaurant or if they also had rooms.

  A few minutes earlier, Markus had sat up and made it clear that she was to stop at the next place they came to. No matter what. He didn’t care if it was Packwood II or a big swanky Hilton. He just didn’t want to be in the car any longer.

  It was a hotel, and while they waited to be checked in the receptionist, Kevin, pointed to a little buffet that was set up in the middle of the foyer. There was a fire in the room’s big fireplace, and the guests sat around small tables sipping and chatting.

  Plush sofas and refinished furniture in cool, luxurious styles.

  “Tea or wine?” asked a waiter wearing a white jacket and a cook’s apron tied around his waist. “Help yourself, it’s included.”

  Afternoon tea, thought Camilla, smiling as she followed Markus over to a sofa. How decadent—and how idiotic to come to such a nice, quiet place looking like something the cat dragged in.

  Fruit, cheese, cold cuts, pâté, and little sandwich breads.

  “Do you want anything?” she asked, offering to get it for him.

  He was still a bit pale, and he looked exhausted, but the prospect of a few little delicacies got him to follow her up to the table. Before Camilla had had a look around, he’d already heaped a plate for himself and was walking over to the waiter in white to ask for a soft drink.

  She smiled at him when he came back to the sofa and sat down.

  “I think we need to start over again,” she said.

  He raised an eyebrow, the same face he made when he wanted to make it clear he didn’t find one of his mother’s jokes to be funny.

  “Drive back?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  The waiter came by with her tea. She selected a tea bag from a fancy box with a wide assortment and plunged the bag into the hot water.

  “No, I just mean we should enjoy ourselves. Relax, do a bunch of things we want to do. We can start by staying here a few days. That’s what I’d really like to do. Maybe they’ve got a movie theater in town, and we can watch films and eat popcorn.”

  “Supersize?” he asked.

  Apparently, his nausea had passed.

  “Pardon me,” she said and took the first bite. She felt hungry. They’d mostly had burgers the last couple of days. Not that they’d been bad, just a little monotonous.

  “Do you think they have movies in the room?” he asked.

  He got up to get more strawberries.

  “This place is great. I want to stay here, too,” he said.

  Camilla smiled at him. She walked up to the reception desk to ask if it were possible to book two extra nights, and whether there was Internet in their room.

  21

  The sad, tired light of an October morning spread over Gammel Kongevej as Louise biked into Police Headquarters. As usual, the bike lane was packed and moved slowly at that hour. People jostled to get ahead.

  She thought about Britt and how her whole life had been filled with music and instruments. After she could no longer play, she’d supported and followed her daughter. Either the music would help her through the grief, or it would tie her to it—and then the slender little woman would fall apart.

  She’d been so full of hate standing there in her living room. What was even worse, Louise thought as she made it to Otto Mønsteds Gade and parked her bike in back of Headquarters, was that Britt’s own feelings of guilt were starting to eat away at her.

  A little after eight o’clock, Louise walked through the side entrance and continued up the stairs to the second floor. She had her office key in her hand, but her thoughts were still on Britt out in Svanemølle.

  At first, she didn’t react to her office door being unlocked. It was only after she’d put her key away and pushed open the door that she was torn from her thoughts.

  Both blinds were rolled down and closed. The ceiling light was off, and only a single lamp on the desk was lit. In Lars Jørgensen’s place there was a guy with chalk-white hair buried behind two computer screens. Louise had never seen him before. He had on a big pair of headphones that sent a throbbing bass spilling through the clunky headset.

  Speechless, she stopped and took a step back. If it hadn’t been for her own things and the electric kettle, she would have jumped to the conclusion that she’d made a mistake. But everything was there—the tea bags, her files, the drawings that Markus had made for her over the years pinned to her bulletin board.

  “And who are you?” she asked.

  She tossed her bag down, unsure if he’d even noticed her come in.

  He stood up.

  At first she thought he was a teenager because of his hip hooded sweatshirt and army pants, but she’d gotten that wrong.

  He wasn’t very tall, a little shorter than her, maybe five foot five. And nowhere near as young as she’d first thought—maybe midforties.

  Louise had also guessed that his hair was bleached, but now that he came toward her she saw that everything about him was bleached out. His eyes were piercingly light blue, as if the irises had filled out too much, and his eyebrows were hard to make out against the pale skin of his face.

  “Gylling,” he said and quickly offered his hand to her, music still blaring from the headphones. “And my first name’s Sejr.”

  Louise just nodded. It was almost more than she could grasp so early in the morning. Behind him she saw a little refrigerator that had been hidden by the office chair. Her eyes then took in a half liter of cola sitting on the desk.

  Finally, he whipped off the headphones so they hung like a collar around his neck.

  “Guitar Gangsters and Cadillac Blood.”

  He fished an iPod out of his pants pocket and turned it down.

  “Good. You’ve met each other,” Suhr said from the door. “Gylling is one of the top men down in Fraud.”

  The lieutenant walked over and shook his hand, then sat down on a short bench along the wall.

  “But he also has years of experience in the various special departments,” he said, on
the verge of sounding impressed. “Financial Crimes, International Criminal Cases,” he listed off. “And then he was, as far as I recall, also with PET for a longer period.”

  Suhr talked about the man as if he weren’t there in the room. And, as a matter of fact, he wasn’t. Louise’s new colleague had put his headphones on again and entrenched himself behind his screens.

  She went over to pull her blinds up.

  “Rather you didn’t,” he said from behind the screens. “And no light from the ceiling, either, if you don’t mind.”

  She raised her eyebrows and looked at her boss.

  “We could in theory have received his expertise from the Fraud Department, and then he could have stayed sitting down there on Store Kongensgade.”

  “Yes, we could. But that wouldn’t have solved the problem of finding you a new partner until we know whether Lars Jørgensen is coming back.”

  Louise stared incredulously at Suhr, and then over at the other side of the desk.

  “Of course, Lars Jørgensen is coming back. It’ll be at most a couple of weeks. And I can easily manage it with Toft and Michael Stig. There’s no reason to do anything rash.”

  “Bingo! Nick Hartmann is registered with Business Affairs. He has a company.”

  “Now look at that!” Suhr exclaimed with satisfaction and stood up.

  Louise followed him out into the hall.

  “Now, you stop it,” she said.

  She planted herself in front of him.

  “I haven’t even glanced at the central business registry yet. Hell, it was only yesterday we got his bank statements and discovered that there was something that needed to be looked into.”

  “Sejr is one of the best investigators of money swindling. He has many years of experience,” said Suhr, “and we need to get somewhere with this case. So far nothing’s come of it, even though you’ve had three people detained for a week.”