The Running Girl

by Sara Blaedel

“No, not as far as I recall.”

  “Did you drive anywhere?”

  “You mean while I was knocked out on sleeping pills? No, I didn’t.”

  Louise smiled at her, stuck her pad back in her bag, and said she’d like to have permission to look over her car on the way out.

  “You’re welcome to. The keys are on the bureau,” Britt said.

  She walked with her out to the entryway.

  Louise almost forgot her scarf on the back of the chair, and when she came into the hall Britt was already putting on a sweater and sticking her feet into the rubber boots she’d worn as she went around sweeping.

  The black Golf was at most a year old and still had that new-car smell as Louise stuck her head in and looked around. On the front seat, there was a Dior lipstick and a little perfume sample. Typical lady’s car, she thought. The back seat was empty and clean.

  Truthfully, it was mostly for Willumsen’s sake that she went through the car. But then it would be over with. Afterward she and Jonas would take off for the country and enjoy the extra vacation days.

  She slammed the door shut and opened the trunk. Took a step back and looked at Britt.

  “Do you usually drive around with a spare can in your car?”

  Britt shook her head.

  “By and large, I don’t drive around much. I mostly bike. It’s only if I have to go on longer trips that I take the car.”

  “There’s a can of gasoline in the back of your car.”

  She waved Britt over.

  No reaction at all. There was nothing to trace on her face or in her eyes, which just stared at Louise uncomprehendingly. But then she slowly walked over to the car and leaned forward a bit to look into the trunk.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she answered and looked up at Louise. “I don’t have one of those.”

  Louise closed the trunk with the sleeve of her sweater. She felt irritation, and just then the queasiness came back.

  “Britt, what the hell?”

  They stood together a moment.

  “I don’t know anything about that can,” she repeated then shook her head. “Never seen it before.”

  Then she turned to the empty spot where the Audi was usually parked and gestured with her hands.

  “Maybe it’s Ulrik’s. His car’s at the airport. He may have put the gas can over in my car to have space for his luggage. Otherwise, I don’t know where it came from.”

  Louise walked over and put her arms around her. She was as thin as a baby bird and stood there with her head bowed.

  “Were you down at the harbor last night?”

  She stepped back a little and looked at Britt.

  “How could I know anyone was sleeping down there?” Britt asked sensibly.

  Her eyes were blank and she suddenly seemed like a little girl that someone had forgotten to take home with them.

  “You couldn’t have known, unless you were keeping an eye on the boathouse and saw them go in there.”

  “I didn’t. I haven’t even been down to the harbor since the night we held the party, and I probably never will.”

  “I need to have your car brought in for a closer inspection,” Louise said apologetically.

  “Absolutely,” said Britt quickly and dried her eyes. “That’s understandable. I don’t have anything to hide from you, and I’ll just be glad if you can find out where that gas can came from so I don’t get mixed up in all this.”

  Louise stepped aside and found Frandsen’s number in her contacts. Then she turned her back to Britt, while she talked with the chief of the Center for Forensic Services. Not that she needed to be discreet, she discovered when she’d finished speaking. Britt had already walked over to the front door and stood there waiting to go into the warm house.

  “Someone is coming to pick up your car within the next hour.”

  Britt nodded, and Louise went up the steps to the weathered porch and gave her a hug before saying good-bye.

  “It’s good that Ulrik will be back tomorrow. Call if there’s anything. Jonas and I are driving down to my parents’ in the country tonight. It’s fall break, you know, so we’ll be down there till Wednesday, but I’ll have my cell phone with me.”

  Britt nodded and smiled, so that her lips drew a precise, thin line across her mouth.

  “I’m terribly sorry if I’ve created problems for you. But I wasn’t anywhere last night,” she said and opened the front door to go inside. “Just here.”

  As Louise walked down toward Svanemølle Harbor, darkness was beginning to fall. She called Willumsen’s cell, and when it went to voice mail, she left a message informing him that she’d asked to have Britt Fasting-Thomsen’s car brought in for closer inspection, even though she said she’d been home the entire evening.

  Before finishing the message, she reminded him that she wouldn’t be back to work again until Thursday. “Have a good weekend,” she said before hanging up. Then she called Jonas and told him she was on her way and promised him they’d make it out to the country before eight o’clock, so they could watch Dancing with the Stars.

  35

  On Saturday, Louise lay on the sofa. She was trying to look like she was reading, but most of the time she slept.

  Her father had taken Jonas over to Skjoldenæsholm Golf Center in a nearby town. First, they’d eaten lunch at Kudskehuset and after that struggled up Gyldenløveshøj, which her father in his usual school teacher manner taught the boy was the highest point on Zealand. There, to her father’s great delight, they’d sat for hours, each with a pair of binoculars, and when they arrived back home in the afternoon practically frozen to death, they were ecstatic over all they’d seen.

  Venison was on the evening’s menu, and afterward they played Scrabble until Louise was ready to fall out of her seat.

  Mik had called to talk about their Sunday plans, and had been mildly disappointed to learn they wouldn’t be making it out to Holbæk at the break of dawn. Louise wanted to be allowed to sleep in until she woke up, then start the day easy.

  * * *

  On Sunday morning, the car radio played as Louise and Jonas drove across the Munkholm Bridge. The sun was low and glared in their eyes underneath their sun visors. She’d shown him the place she used to drive to on warm summer nights to have ice cream and visit with friends when she was younger. Even though he didn’t come right out and say it, she could tell that Jonas was so much of a city boy that he couldn’t imagine having to drive ten miles on a motorbike to hang out and have ice cream.

  Louise smiled at him and took in the view over the water. The leaves were beginning to fall off the trees, and the ice cream stand was closed. Still it was pretty, and the light shimmered as they drove through the forest, where the half-naked branches created a filter for the sun’s beams.

  She swung to the left up toward Dragerup and let her eyes take in the fields. The road was narrow and curvy, small gravel roads pushed the farms back a little from the main road, off toward the water, and Holbæk Fjord glimmered behind the freshly plowed fields.

  Mik’s red three-winged farmhouse was on the left, idyllic with its thatched roofs and half-timbers, but Louise was most captivated by the view from his yard, where fields stretched off into the distance, all the way to the forest.

  The first time she’d visited him, there’d been a bench up against the wall of the house, so they could sit there and take in a panoramic view. The only minus was that the bench was the kind made from split and planed tree trunks, and across its back in fat letters were burned the words, “Dad’s Beer Bench.”

  For his birthday last year, Louise had presented Mik with a more neutral bench with a matching table and two chairs. That evening, they’d brought the grill from the garden and sat out in his yard and eaten, instead of having their view blocked by tall trees.

  As usual, the pointer was the first to come rushing out to greet them as soon as they’d parked and gotten out in the yard. A moment later Mik came out from the kitchen door. He was
wearing clogs, a black crewneck sweater, and a new pair of blue jeans. All shaven and nice-smelling, she realized when he came over with a smile and gave her a hug and a warm kiss on the mouth.

  The yellow Lab had also come out, even though she was a bit more hesitant.

  Jonas was already occupied with the dogs.

  “How are the puppies doing?” he asked.

  He let himself be embraced by Mik, who obviously liked him and had offered several times to come into the city and stay with Jonas if Louise had something to do. But so far there hadn’t been a something.

  “They’re in the mud room. You’re welcome to go see them.”

  Jonas ran across the yard. Once he’d disappeared, Mik pulled Louise closer and kissed her a bit more seriously. He put his arm around her shoulder, and they walked to the house.

  Mik smiled when he saw Jonas sitting on the floor with the five puppies jumping up around him, three black and two yellow. One of the small light-colored ones tried to crawl up on him, but its back legs couldn’t make it up, so every time it tried it fell back down. At last Jonas took pity on it and lifted it into his lap.

  Louise shook her head and smiled when, in utter bliss, he bent over and put his cheek against the puppy’s soft fur.

  Mik’s puppies had arrived last weekend, and in the coming week they’d be picked up by their new families. Now—standing and looking at such a sweet litter of puppies—was exactly the time when Louise would suddenly have a hard time remembering why she didn’t want a dog.

  Fortunately, it always came to her mind rather quickly that they needed to be cared for and taken outside on a regular basis, and she knew she couldn’t live up to the responsibility. Mik had offered her the pick of the litter, otherwise.

  “Have they all been sold?”

  He squatted down and petted one of the black ones.

  Mik nodded and sent the pointer out in the yard. His hunting dog wasn’t as much of an indoors-dog as the others, but it hated to miss out on pats and loving, so it had barged in and was too rough around the little puppies.

  “Yes,” said Mik. “Except Dina.”

  He pointed to the puppy that Jonas sat fondling.

  “The vet thinks she’s deaf, or at least partially deaf. So, she won’t make it as a hunting dog, and no one wants to pay that kind of money for a dog that can’t hear properly. Other breeders would probably euthanize her, but I don’t have the heart for it.”

  Jonas looked up at Mik.

  “You can’t even tell she’s deaf,” he said.

  Mik shook his head and explained that it wouldn’t be a problem, either, until her owner wanted to start training her.

  * * *

  After lunch, they took a long walk in the woods with the pointer zigzagging around them. Strictly speaking, one wasn’t supposed to have a dog off leash, but Mik’s hunting dogs obeyed him—they’d come even if he whistled for them from a hundred yards away; if he told them to sit, they’d stay sitting until he released them, even if several hours passed and he was out of sight the whole time.

  That’s why he scorned the rules and let his dog run free. Jonas tried to keep up with it, and tossed sticks for it—in between tree trunks and onto the soft forest floor.

  Louise and Mik held hands and lagged behind.

  “How are things in the city?” asked Mik. “It can’t be so great living there. Gang wars are becoming the daily fare.”

  Louise smiled at him and shook her head.

  “It’s not that bad yet.”

  “Don’t you worry about something happening to Jonas?” he asked and gave her a serious look.

  “That’s no worse, either,” she snapped when she saw where he was headed. “And anyhow, the plan isn’t for Jonas to stay with me. He’s there for now, but sometime in the new year we’ll find a more permanent solution.”

  “He likes being with you,” Mik said and squeezed her hand. “You can’t go shipping him off to some people he doesn’t even know!”

  Louise let go of his hand and stuck her hands in her jacket pockets. She kicked a small stone, which skidded across the gravel and disappeared in the tall grass.

  “There’s no other option,” she said. “I really, really like Jonas. I grow more and more attached to him every passing day, and I want the very best for him. And the very best for him is not living with me. I keep letting him down. One day I’m not home at dinner time, another day I’m not home to help him with homework. There’s always something that gets in the way of our plans. I can’t do it. It’s not the way he should grow up. He just needs to get over everything that’s happened, then we’ll find another solution together.”

  “You’re running from your responsibility,” Mik said quietly.

  She turned to him.

  “I don’t have any damned responsibility to be running from. That’s exactly how I’ve chosen to arrange it. I’m putting myself at Jonas’s disposal, but I sure as hell haven’t forsaken any responsibility.”

  “The kid’s lost both his parents. There’s no one but you—so that’s plenty of responsibility!”

  He shook his head in frustration.

  “Why are you being stubborn?” she asked without looking at him.

  “Because there is another option. You can move out here. There’s plenty of space, and then we could share the responsibility. Just look at him!”

  The boy and the dog both panted for air, but still they bounced and ran along. Jonas, who mostly sat in his room absorbed in his books or computer games, had surprisingly red cheeks and glistening eyes. He tossed a stick in a high arc between the trees, and the dog gladly ran after it.

  “It’s not so simple,” she said.

  She let Mik fish her hand out of her pocket.

  “Yes, if you’ll let it be, it’s very simple. You could get transferred and work up here.”

  “I can’t leave Frederiksberg. And Jonas goes to school in the city.”

  “It might be good for him to switch schools. He still seems to be struggling with losing his friend. And he just told me that the boathouse where those teens stayed burned down a few days ago.”

  Louise nodded. Jonas had heard about it from some friends at school. She wasn’t the one who’d told him.

  “It seems to be on his mind all the time,” he said.

  Of course it was, thought Louise, but it was irritating to have Mik remind her of it.

  “Could it have been one of the students from school who set fire to the boathouse, to avenge what happened to the girl?”

  Louise looked at him in surprise, but shook her head.

  “The boys were thrown out from down there right after the attack. No one was staying in the boathouse any longer.”

  Suddenly a thought started to stir in her, pushing Mik and everything he was saying into the background.

  Could it have been one or more of the boys in the boathouse who’d set fire to it themselves, in response to being thrown out? Clearly, they wouldn’t have meant to kill their friends, but it seemed none of them knew that Peter Nymann and Sebastian Styhne had spent the night down there. They’d all reacted as if no one went there anymore. It might be worth checking out when she was back, she thought, before Willumsen single-mindedly went after Britt, staring himself blind in her direction.

  Louise nodded to herself as she walked and the new bricks fell into place. Mik may have thought he’d given her something to think about regarding Jonas and her own plans for the future. At any rate, he let the subject rest. When they got home he served them coffee and cinnamon pastries from the bakery, then he got started tying rosemary around a large leg of lamb that needed to go in the oven.

  * * *

  “Are you starting to see more of Flemming Larsen?” Mik asked after they’d eaten and were sitting with the rest of their wine.

  She’d been waiting for the question to pop up sooner or later, and shook her head.

  “We work together, so we see each other occasionally. Same as it’s always been.”

&
nbsp; She could tell that Mik wanted to press the issue, but thought better of it. Instead, he offered to make a pot of coffee.

  She shook her head and looked at her watch.

  Jonas was on the floor out in the mud room, petting a puppy that lay on his chest as if it had fallen from the ceiling with its legs splayed out in all directions. It nipped at the scarf around his neck.

  They needed to be getting back to Hvalsø. She carried the dishes out to the sink.

  Mik came over and stood behind her, then put his arms around her and let his cheek rest against hers.

  “I’m crazy about you,” he whispered.

  She closed her eyes.

  She turned and put her arms around him and her cheek against his chest. They stood that way until she pulled herself back a little and looked up into his narrow face and warm eyes.

  “I can’t move up here,” she said.

  She looked at him seriously, trying to read whether he understood she really meant it. Right now, love wasn’t enough to make her leave the place where she had her routine and the life she’d chosen for herself.

  “I’m happy where I am,” she said.

  He nodded and held her close, until she turned her face toward the mud room and called for Jonas to get his things together so they could head out.

  Mik kissed her hair before he let go.

  They walked out to the mud room, where Jonas carefully set the puppy back in its temporary enclosure. He stood a while looking at it, then grabbed his bag with his PS2 and the books he’d brought with him, but hadn’t had any use for. Then he gave Mik an extra hug and followed Louise out the door to the yard.

  Yet another sign of that politeness that broke her heart. With most other children, the parents would first have to go through a long discussion about why they really did have to leave, even if they were having so much fun. That’s not how it was with Jonas. When Louise said they were leaving, he came without complaint.

  She gave his arm a tender squeeze before closing the car door for him.

  * * *

  Monday morning a brisk wind blew, and it bit at their cheeks as Louise and Jonas biked through the forest out toward Avnsø Lake. The fall foliage turned the forest floor golden, as if a blanket had been thrown over the ground.