41
‘We’re pretty much dealing with just five recurring ingoing and outgoing numbers. Gunilla Moen’s direct line, the direct line to the head of HR, Solgården’s switchboard, Jounas Smeed’s mobile and Sigrid Smeed’s mobile. And a smattering of calls to and from various sales people and suppliers as well, of course. And one logged call from a Swedish number and three from an unlisted pay-as-you-go number.’
Cornelis Loots’ big, freckled hands flip through the stapled-together A4 sheets detailing the past six months’ calls to and from Susanne Smeed’s work phone. Even Karl Björken had been forced to admit TelAB had proven unusually expeditious when their report arrived a couple of hours earlier.
Cornelis Loots puts the papers aside on the table and looks up at his colleagues, who are all looking back at him expectantly.
‘And,’ he says slowly, as though relishing being the centre of attention for once, ‘that pay-as-you-go SIM card was purchased in Sweden. In Malmö, to be precise.’
‘I see. By Disa Brinckmann, I’d bet,’ Karl says and leans back with a sigh.
Karen has nabbed the call list from Cornelis. Now she flips through her own notes, stops and then shakes her head.
‘Nope, it’s not Disa Brinckmann’s phone,’ she says. ‘But the listed number’s hers. So clearly, she did get hold of Susanne in the end. They spoke for almost an hour on 21 June.’
‘Then who the fuck’s the other caller? Another person who also lives in Malmö; what are the odds of that? Nah, I’d bet anything that pay-as-you-go number belongs to Brinckmann as well.’
‘Since Susanne wasn’t allowed to use her work phone for private calls, she must’ve had a private mobile, too,’ Astrid Nielsen puts in. ‘I bet anything juicy would be on that one.’
‘I agree, it must have been more than a regular alibi phone,’ Karl puts in.
Karen looks at Karl with raised eyebrows.
‘An “alibi phone”?’
‘Yeah, to keep up appearances at work. You don’t have to use it for anything other than porn surfing and making blackmail calls.’
‘Do you have one? To keep up appearances, I mean?’
‘Of course not; I’m always on duty.’ Karl grins. ‘The state’s going to have to pay for the few private calls I make.’
‘Well, I do have a personal phone,’ Astrid says. ‘We have some kind of family contract that lets you have several numbers.’
Of course, Karen concludes with a sigh. Mr and Mrs Goody-Goody always make the right decisions: they go running and eat healthily and have family phone contracts. They probably go to church, too. Just then, it strikes her that Astrid’s looking unusually pale. A strand of hair has slipped out of her ponytail; she wearily pushes it out of her face.
‘Either way, Susanne had a total of three incoming phone calls from the pay-as-you-go number to her work phone,’ Cornelis Loots continues patiently. ‘Two calls at the end of June, the first lasting almost half an hour and the second just over two minutes. Then nothing for almost three months, which is when another call is logged from the same number, but that one seems to have gone straight to voicemail.
Cornelis pauses for effect before pressing on.
‘That call came in on the twenty-seventh of September at 10.15 a.m.,’ he says.
‘The twenty-seventh. But that was last Friday!’
*
The room is dead silent for exactly four seconds. Someone called Susanne two days before she was murdered. Four seconds of silence before Cornelis Loots clears his throat once more.
‘TelAB has also helped us identify the location from which the call was made and it looks like it was relayed by a mast in central Copenhagen.’
‘Then it’s definitely not Disa Brinckmann. She went to Spain on the’ – Karen flips through her notes – ‘twenty-seventh, actually. She would hardly have had time to pop over to Copenhagen on the same day she flew to Bilbao.’
Astrid Nielsen has been sitting quietly, fiddling with her phone. Now she reaches for the water jug while popping a blister pack of paracetamol with her other hand. She really does look tired. Karen pushes the jug closer to Astrid. I should probably talk to her, ask her how she’s doing. Astrid discreetly puts the pill in her mouth and swallows it down with two quick sips of water.
‘There would have been enough time,’ she says. ‘The train from Malmö to Copenhagen takes just over half an hour. And there are a lot more flights from Kastrup Airport in Copenhagen than from Malmö Airport. It may well have been the easiest way for Disa to get to Bilbao.’
‘Provided she’s actually in Spain,’ Karl put in. ‘She may have come here instead. We have all the passenger lists from the twenty-seventh, right? Maybe there was a Disa Brinckmann on a flight from Kastrup to Dunker.’
Cornelis nods and gets up.
‘I’ll check right now.’
The conference room is humming with something Karen hasn’t felt in days. Hope. Maybe they’ve finally found a lead worth pursuing.
*
Hope has quickly shrivelled up and died.
‘There was no Disa Brinckmann on any flight to Dunker on the twenty-seventh,’ Cornelis Loots announces when he returns to the conference room, with an almost apologetic look on his face.
‘She might have come earlier, we’re going to have to check a few more dates.’
‘No point, I’m afraid,’ Cornelis Loots says. ‘According to SAS, there was a Disa Brinckmann on the 9.40 a.m. flight from Malmö to Bilbao on the twenty-seventh of September.
Silence envelops the room once more.
‘So the old lady was verifiably on her way to Spain when the call was made,’ Karl says dully, putting into words what they’ve all figured out already. ‘All right, so it can’t possibly have been Disa Brinckmann. Then who the fuck was it?’
42
Karen turns off the motorway at the Grenå Mall exit. It’s almost half past six but at Tema the queues are still long. The Friday afternoon crowds at the supermarkets have become so intolerable in recent years that more and more people have started doing their big shops on Thursdays. And now, the race to buy food for the weekend has brought the crowds forward even further, to Wednesday nights. At this rate, Karen ponders grimly with a glance at her ticket for the alcohol counter, we’re all going to have to do our weekend shops on Sunday night.
The islanders’ discipline when it comes to buying alcohol is strict and their efficiency level high. At the deli counter, people are allowed to dither, wavering between pâtés and serrano ham; at the fishmongers’, a certain level of pickiness and contemplation is expected. At the alcohol counter, on the other hand, you’re supposed to know what you want, place your order quickly and clearly, swipe your card, take your receipt and collect your purchases at the pick-up counter a few minutes later. A kind of assembly line principle that makes the ticket numbers tick by quickly. A bottle of wine or beer can be picked up from a corner shop, with their limited selection, but more large-scale purchases are always made at a Tema or Freja supermarket. Karen intends to make a large-scale purchase. The food she’s planning for Saturday may be simple, but there will be plenty to drink. Besides, she needs to restock her stores anyway.
*
Within twenty minutes, she’s pushing her clinking trolley across the car park’s pitted tarmac.
After loading two boxes of wine, a tray of beer cans, two bottles of gin, a bottle of whiskey and a carrier bag containing onions, garlic, butter and cream into her car, she bites off a large piece of the chocolate bar she’d picked up at the tills and spins around to return her trolley.
She goes over her plan: she has time to swing by the harbour to pick up mussels on Friday and Marike has promised to bring freshly baked bread from town, but she should probably serve some kind of dessert, too. Why hasn’t she thought of that? The idea of going back in again for more food is off-putting to say the least.
A young man in a red Tema smock has detached a long line of parked shopping trolleys and started dragg
ing them toward the entrance. Apple pie, she decides, I have a tonne of apples at home, that’ll do.
‘Hey, do you want this one, too?’
The young man stops and turns around, but doesn’t look like he appreciates the interruption. He accepts Karen’s trolley with a sigh and pushes it into the end of the train. He has to really put his back into it to get the long line of trolleys moving again; Karen’s eyes linger on the hunched figure while her mind keeps running through her Saturday plans. A classic apple and cinnamon pie, perhaps, or maybe a tarte Tatin . . .
Then she stiffens. She quickly pulls out her phone and scrolls through her contacts.
Jounas Smeed picks up after five rings.
‘Why, hello again, Eiken, what can I do for you this time?’
His words are impeccably friendly, but his tone reveals that he’s not happy to hear from her. She ignores that and gets right to the point, not bothering with a greeting.
‘That man you ran into on Sunday morning. He asked you for cigarettes, you said. Do you remember anything else about him?’
‘Oh, give it a rest, will you. No, as I already told you. Do you have any idea how many drunks are staggering around this town? Haugen did tell me you were pretty much at a standstill, but have you really not found anything better to look into?’
‘You really can’t remember anything?’ she wheedles. ‘Anything at all. Try.’
‘You mean aside from the reek of sweat and old booze? Please, Karen, you’re really not good-looking enough to be this dumb.’
He chuckles, clearly pleased with his double insult, and she struggles with an urge to hang up. It would be so easy to just forget the whole thing. It’s certainly not for Jounas’s sake she decides to make one more attempt.
‘You said you ran into him on the promenade. Did you maybe see which direction he was coming from?’
‘How the fuck should I know? He was standing at the end of the street, swaying, at the top of the hill above the turn-off to the beach. What are you getting at?’
There’s a change in Jounas’s voice; a faint hint of curiosity coming through the feigned indifference. She hesitates before asking, doesn’t want to nudge him in any particular direction. This is a brittle straw she’s grasping.
‘Well, like, did he have anything with him?’
An exasperated sigh indicates that whatever interest had been budding in Jounas Smeed has now withered again just as quickly.
‘I don’t bloody know if he had something with him. I think he had one of those big shopping trolleys some of them steal from supermarkets, but I didn’t ask to see what he kept in it. Seriously, Eiken . . .’
Without another word, she ends the call.
43
Spinnhusgate looks deserted when Karen slowly turns at city hall park and continues up Valhallagate toward the parking garage behind the old market hall. She’s hunching forward over the wheel slightly, peering out the side windows to the monotonous accompaniment of the windscreen wipers, which sweep the drizzle off the glass every four seconds. As she draws level with the garage, she spots what she’s looking for. She quickly pulls over, leans across the passenger seat and rolls the window down. The woman, who’s just about to duck under the yellow boom blocking the exit, stops at the sound of a car braking and whips around. She instinctively pushes her bosom out and puckers her lips invitingly. A split second later, she realises who’s in the car and gives up the act.
‘Hiya, Gro,’ Karen calls out, ‘would you like to hop in and warm yourself for a minute? There’s something I want to ask you.’
Gro Aske hesitates for a moment, then totters over to the edge of the kerb in her high-heeled boots. Then she bends down and shoots off a crooked smile that reveals a missing canine in her upper jaw.
‘God, you sound exactly like a punter.’
Her bleached hair has dark roots and is damp with rain; her short, white, faux-fur jacket is probably a lousy choice for the weather.
‘You wouldn’t happen to have anything to drink?’ Gro Aske says hopefully after climbing in and blowing warm air into her cupped hands. ‘I could use something to warm me up.’
At least she had the good sense to leave the miniskirt at home today, Karen muses, eyeing the skinny jeans wrapped around Gro Aske’s stick-thin thighs.
‘Sorry,’ she replies. ‘But how about a cigarette instead?’ she adds and pulls a new packet out of her jacket pocket.
She remembers the boxes of wine, beer and whiskey in the flatbed. If you only knew what I have in the back . . . Then she winces at the rattling that rises out of Gro Aske’s lungs as she takes a first drag and lets out a spluttering curse. Karen has seen Gro walk the streets for almost ten years, and yet it’s only now, up close, that she realises how haggard the other woman really looks; emaciated, her eyes hollow, her skin grey. She’s probably not even thirty, trying not to show how awkward she feels.
‘Isn’t it time to call it quits soon?’ she asks.
‘With the smoking, you mean?’ Gro retorts with a sarcastic smile.
‘You know what I mean.’
‘And do what?’
‘I don’t know, wake up without anxiety for once, maybe. Stop worrying about how to pay for that shit. Maybe see your daughter again. You’d probably get a place at Lindvallen right away if you applied.’
‘I know. I think about it every morning, actually, as soon as I get my first hit, but then every night, there I am, out looking for more. Well, you know how it is . . .’
Do I? Karen wonders.
What does she really know about these women and young girls in their obscenely short skirts and freezing legs, bending down to talk through car windows? What does she know about sleepless mothers who are haunted by visions of freezing drug dens and forks stuck in fuse boxes and who live in fear of that inevitable call informing them of a deadly overdose? What does she really know about what it takes to break out of that?
Is her own inability to get her life back on track really as different from Gro’s as she likes to imagine?
Karen decides to go straight to the point.
‘I need your help,’ she says. ‘You know most of the homeless people in this town, right?’
Gro pouts to indicate that she might and studies the glowing end of her cigarette without replying.
‘There’s this man who pulls a big shopping trolley around,’ Karen continues.
‘A lot of them do. They call them bum buggies.’
Karen lets out an involuntary chuckle.
‘This bloke hangs around the promenade a lot, I think, collecting empties.’
Gro takes a deep drag, holds the smoke in her lungs for a few second then exhales with a loud puff.
‘I don’t grass. You know that.’
‘I know, and I’m not trying to nail him for anything. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have come to you.’
‘Then what the fuck is it about?’
‘He might be able to give a person an alibi, that’s all. I promise, Gro.’
‘And you don’t have anything to drink?’
Karen puts her hand on the ignition key.
‘Are you going to help me out or not? If not, I’m going to have to keep looking.’
Gro Aske takes one last deep drag, opens the door and flicks the butt out onto the pavement. But then she closes it again.
‘You’re probably talking about the new guy,’ she says. ‘Leo Friis, I think. He keeps to himself, mostly, but sometimes he hangs out in the park with the other old gits for a bit. Though I hardly think he’ll be there in this weather.’
Leo Friis. Karen knows there’s something familiar about that name. He’s probably been nicked for public intoxication more than once.
‘What else? Do you know where I can find him?’
‘And you’re telling me he hasn’t done anything?’
‘I promise. Cross my heart.’
Karen holds out the cigarettes, wiggling the packet invitingly; Gro reaches out with a froz
en hand.
‘Apparently he’s a bit nuts about confined spaces. Have you checked down at the New Harbour, under the loading docks?’
44
The call comes just as she’s turning off the motorway toward Dunker. Karen turns the eight o’clock news down and pushes in her earbud.
Her attempts to locate Leo Friis the night before were futile. Having circled the storage buildings and loading docks at a crawl, headlights sweeping like searchlights, for twenty minutes, she gave up. The old harbour with the misleading name the New Harbour was small by today’s standards, but difficult to search. If Leo Friis was holed up in one of its countless nooks and crannies, chances were he’d see her long before she could spot him. And if he, like all other homeless people, was able to smell a copper from a mile away, he’d be unlikely to make his presence known.
By contrast, her sudden impulse to call Sara Inguldsen’s mobile had been a success. No, she’d said, she was home at the moment, just about to go to bed, in fact, but she and Björn were on duty from half past five tomorrow morning. Of course they were happy to keep their eyes peeled for a homeless man pulling a shopping trolley in the area around the old New Harbour.
‘Don’t nick him,’ Karen had reminded her one last time before ending the call. ‘Keep your distance and let me know where he is; I’ll speak to him.’
And lo and behold, this morning, Sara Inguldsen had called to inform her they’d spotted someone fitting Friis’s description trudging up the slope from the quayside toward Gammelgårdsvägen.
*
It takes her six minutes to locate him. Leo Friis is shuffling up the gentle incline of Gammelgårdsvägen toward the town centre, his shoulders hunched under a grey woollen blanket. Karen drives past and stops further up the street. Then she climbs out of the car, pulls out a packet of cigarettes and pretends to be looking for something in her handbag. Bloody lucky I haven’t managed to quit, she quips to herself; maybe I should claim the smokes as a work expense.
Fatal Isles Page 23
