Karen does understand that. They’re short-staffed and prioritising the rapes is the right call, especially since it’s likely the rapist will strike again. Truth be told, she would give a lot to be able to drop anything that has to do with the Smeeds, burglaries and stolen motorcycles, and instead dedicate all her time to nailing the bastard terrorising Moerbeck.
*
Both she and Karl attend the first meetings about the rapes. Everyone at the CID is supposed to stay abreast of all major investigations at all times. And even though there’s nothing to indicate it at this early stage, connections between cases can never be ruled out, nor can the possibility that some of the people who will be interviewed in connection with one case might have information about another. The internal information flow in criminal circles is considerably more comprehensive than the one in PIR, and faster. The police have been able to use that to their advantage more than once.
The news has them all feeling shaken. The room is dead silent while Kneought Brodal runs through the details. A broken bottle was used in both cases; the victims’ faces and chests were slashed and then the perpetrator inserted the broken bottles into their vaginas. The bloody remains of a 350 ml bottle of Groth’s Old Stone Selection was found at the scene where a passing dog owner came across Sabrine Broe, wandering about aimlessly at four in the morning, bleeding and terrified. She was then admitted to Thysted Hospital, traumatised but alive.
Loa Marklund was not as lucky. At half past seven on Sunday morning, a neighbour of hers at Karpvägen 122 and his eight-year-old son, both carrying fishing rods, had taken the lift down to the basement. They were going to fetch their bikes for one last fishing trip to Lake Svartsjön before the end of the season. When the shocked father called emergency services, it had, according to the coroner, been over six hours since someone shoved a broken bottle of Budweiser into Loa’s vagina and twisted it back and forth. The girl had still been alive when the ambulance arrived, despite catastrophic blood loss. By the time they reached Thysted Hospital, she had passed away.
‘Semen?’ someone asks quietly; Kneought Brodal shakes his head.
‘The question is if there was any intercourse at all. Signs indicate the perpetrator was content with letting the bottles do the job for him. A disturbed son of a bitch. Impotent, too, if you ask me.’
Karen studies the members of her former team while the horrifying details of the Moerbeck assaults sink in. Just like when they were first shown the pictures of Susanne, a paralysing silence envelops the room. Then the mood changes, as though some collective spirit were slowly getting to its feet, shaking itself and letting out a deep growl. Their hunting instinct has been awakened again, but this time it’s a different victim and their attention is focused on a different game. Hopefully, this case will be solved faster than hers.
54
Karen grabs the mouse and pauses the playback. Then she leans back in her chair and closes her eyes. Behind her eyelids, the pictures keep flashing by; a seemingly endless stream of vehicles jouncing on board in one frame and rolling off in the other.
The car ferry from Noorö to Thorsvik runs every ten minutes between 6 a.m. and 11.50 p.m. and every twenty minutes after midnight. The puffing yellow boat drags itself back and forth across the sound, whether someone’s on it or not. A growing number of people eager to lower taxes have repeatedly suggested an on-demand solution, at least at night, but have been met with strident protests and so far, the Noorö locals have been able to ward off any threat of cutbacks.
Although the number of night-time passengers hardly justifies the frequent timetable, the stream of cars during other times of day is relatively constant. Big cars, small cars, white cars, dark cars; the footage is black and white and offers only an endless greyscale. Volvo dominates along with BMW, Ford and SUVs of all makes. Bus number 78 rides the ferry every thirty minutes and there are private vehicles, commercial vans, two tractors, trucks with the Ravenby abattoir logo, NoorOyl’s personnel carriers from the northern harbour, filled with exhausted men and women coming off three-week shifts on one of the oil platforms, bicycles, mopeds, an ATV. And the occasional motorcycle. Unfortunately, no Honda CRF 1000L Africa Twin. She has a printed picture of the model on her desk for reference.
*
Karen’s eyes register everyone who drives onto the ferry in Noorö Harbour and, after a few seconds of fast-forwarding, disembarks in Thorsvik. There are two cameras on the ferry, pointed in opposite directions. Both angles are shown in parallel on the screen; she shifts her attention from one during loading to the other during unloading. But after two departures and one missed moped, she realises she’s going to have to study each separately. A motorcycle is easily obscured by cars, lorries or the bus.
The break-in on Noorö had happened sometimes between half past seven in the morning on Tuesday 16 September and quarter to five on the afternoon of Friday 19 September. Three and a half days, hundreds of ferry departures when a young man on a stolen motorcycle might have been caught on film by one of the onboard CCTV cameras.
She opens her eyes and glances to her right. Karl Björken, who’s at the desk next to hers, has just put his phone down and now clicks out the tip of a ballpoint pen and crosses something off a piece of paper with a look of dejection. Another local station with nothing to report, it seems.
‘Want to swap?’ she says. ‘I can’t bear to look at any more of this.’
‘What are you whingeing about?’ Björken says with a wry smile. ‘It can’t be much more than what, a hundred departures a day?’
‘A hundred and twenty-two,’ she replies dully.
‘How far in are you?’
‘I just checked the 9.40 a.m. on 18 September. No Africa Twin on that one either. Not one single goddamn motorcycle since a Kawasaki drove on board at twenty past seven. How are you getting on?’
‘What do you think? If by some miracle I were to find anything, I wouldn’t keep it to myself. But I was actually thinking of heading home soon; Arne and Frode both have a temperature and Sara’s refusing to sleep in her own bed. Ingrid is threatening me with divorce if I’m not home by six. And I’m not taking the children,’ Karl says, imitating his wife.
‘Well, then you’d better hurry,’ Karen says with a smile. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be going on paternity leave soon, by the way?’
‘From the first of November. And no, it has nothing to do with the marten hunting season.’
So Karl’s going on leave in less than a month’s time. Right, she decides, another reason Smeed didn’t want him on his team.
‘I suppose we’d better solve this before then,’ Karl says and turns his computer off. ‘Otherwise, you’re likely to be stuck with Johannisen. Which, on the bright side, would probably lead to him having an actual heart attack.’
‘Or me. I just want to get through the rest of the Wednesday departures, then I’m off, too,’ she says and stretches.
*
Just as Karl Björken opens the front door to his semi-detached in Sande and is greeted by the sound of three crying children, Karen freezes in front of her screen and straightens up from her slumped position. She quickly rewinds the film a few seconds and watches the sequence again.
‘So,’ she says slowly. ‘That’s what you look like.’
55
Sigrid is sitting at the kitchen table when Karen comes home. On the table in front of her, the cat is licking a bowl that looks like it once contained yoghurt and muesli. I wonder in which cupboard she found that? Karen hasn’t had muesli in years. Then images from Susanne Smeed’s interrupted breakfast flash before her inner eye. She quickly shakes off her sudden unease.
‘So, you’re up,’ she says. ‘How are you feeling?’
Sigrid looks up with something that might be a smile. Karen is taken aback by the transformation; it’s the first time she’s seen Sigrid when she’s not hissing like a cat or drooping with fever. She’s still pale and her eyes are glossy, but her cheeks no longer have the rosiness of fev
er and she’s put her hair up in a ponytail.
‘Better, thank you. Is this OK?’ she asks, nodding at the plate.
‘You mean the yoghurt or Rufus? Don’t worry,’ she adds with a smile, ‘he usually does whatever he wants whether I’m here or not.’
She puts the bag on the kitchen counter and watches Sigrid out of the corner of her eye as she gently puts Rufus down on the floor.
‘I brought some Indian food from town. It’s probably cold by now, but I was going to reheat it in the microwave. Are you full or do you have room for some proper food?’
Karen takes a plate from the drying rack and carefully lifts two aluminium containers out of the paper bag.
‘I don’t think I can. But thanks,’ Sigrid adds.
She sits quietly for a while, watching as Karen dumps out a portion of curry masala on a plate and pops it into the microwave.
‘I guess I should go home,’ she says and starts getting up. ‘Or at least head back to Mum’s house.’
Karen pauses mid-movement, her hand on the timer dial.
‘How come? You should stay until you’re feeling better. Speaking of which, have you checked your temperature since this morning?’
‘Half an hour ago. Thirty-eight point six.’
‘Sigrid, I don’t know what crap it is you’ve gone and contracted, but you clearly have some kind of respiratory infection. Exactly, see?’ she adds and pauses while another rumbling coughing racks Sigrid’s thin frame.
‘What I’m saying is, you’re very welcome to stay here until you’re better. What about work, have you called them?’
‘I texted them this morning.’
‘And your boyfriend, Samuel?’
‘My ex,’ Sigrid corrects her.
‘Right, so you’re still apart. Fine, but then I don’t know why you’re in such a hurry to get out of here.’
There’s a ding; Karen takes her plate out.
‘Are you sure?’ she says, with a nod toward the plate.
‘I’m sure.’
She opens the pantry door and takes out a bottle.
‘Well, I’m having a glass, but I’m definitely not giving you one.’
‘I’m actually eighteen.’
‘Great, then you can have a glass when you’re feeling better. So you’ll stay?’
This time, the smile on Sigrid’s wan face is unmistakeable.
*
She’s fallen asleep on the sofa with a blanket over her. She hadn’t wanted to go to bed upstairs; she’d seemed to prefer to stay with Karen, who after having her dinner had settled into an armchair with a crossword puzzle. A faint rattling can be heard from the sofa and from time to time, Sigrid coughs in her sleep. Karen lowers the paper and studies her.
The same age, she thinks. Born the same year, though he was a few months younger. He would have been eighteen in December, too. Hanging out in bars, getting himself a fake ID to buy beer down the pub. He would probably have answered her questions tersely, too, trying to hide the smiles he didn’t want to share. Her son. Mathis.
Maybe he would have run into Sigrid at some point when she and John took him to Doggerland on vacation. They could have met at one of the places in Dunker on a summer night; maybe he would’ve gone to the bar where she works. Listened to her band playing.
Stop it.
She turns back to her crossword.
But she can’t stop the thoughts from coming. Maybe she and John would’ve moved here at some point when they were older, like they talked about sometimes. Though she doubts it.
She’d loved London, had her life there and only rarely yearned for the island, in short, sharp bouts of homesickness. Then her whole body ached with what was missing. The sea. It had been so far away.
‘We’ve got a view of the bloody Thames,’ John had protested.
He’d only said that once.
‘Let’s go to the coast,’ he’d suggested another time when she was overcome with longing. ‘We’ll pack everything up and head over to my sister’s in Margate. That’s the proper ocean.’
‘Margate. Come on, John.’
She’d never been able to explain. But it had always passed. She had liked London, had loved the city from when she first shared a flat in Clapham with Scott, Elina and Ulrich. Even though they’d had to seal the windows with hers and Elina’s tights during the cold winter months. Had loved the pubs, department stores and parks. Had loved the London Met where she’d studied the horrors people inflict on one another. Had loved listening in court. Had loved John and then Mathis. Yes, she really had loved the city that had given her both a husband and a son. The city that had given her a life.
And yet, she’d left it without a second’s pause one day in December almost eleven years ago.
Karen gives up and puts the crossword puzzle down. Is that why I want her to stay? she ponders, studying Sigrid on the sofa. Because her line continues where Mathis’s ended? Because she helps me imagine a future for him? Because she helps me remember?
56
An alert has gone out via PIR. She sent it out herself through the internal reporting platform the moment she found the right film sequence from the Noorö ferry. The images of the young man from the 11.20 departure on 18 September were reasonably clear and the motorcycle’s licence plate matched the stolen one. The problem was that the helmet had a visor that hid his face. For some reason, the bloke got off the motorcycle, walked over to the railing and leaned over it. But the shot was partially blocked by a van; despite scrutinising each frame several times, she’d been unable to confirm whether he was throwing something overboard or simply wanted to stretch his legs and breathe some fresh air. And he kept the helmet on the whole time.
Comparing his size to fixed points on the ferry, Karen had been able to determine that he was about five feet eight and looked gangly, borderline skinny, in his faded jeans and thin jacket. But that was too vague a description. Consequently, the motorcycle was the focus of the internal alert she’d sent out. Granted, there were other ones of the same model, but the colour was unusual. The problem there was that the colour didn’t show in the black-and-white CCTV screenshots she’d posted. But maybe the picture of a yellow Honda Africa Twin she’d found online and posted in PIR alongside the alert would make one of her colleagues react. Or not.
*
‘Sooner or later, the bloke’s going to make a mistake and we’ll nick him,’ Karl says the following morning, blowing on his coffee while bending down to look at Karen’s screen. ‘Crikey, he looks young, how old do you reckon he is, sixteen, seventeen?’
‘Yes, he really does look pretty young. Do you really think he could be the one who killed Susanne? If you’re being really honest, Charlie boy?’
Karl frowns, his dark eyebrows curving. Partly because of the hated nickname, partly because just like Karen, he doubts it. There’s something about the fury with which Susanne was murdered that doesn’t tally with the burglar theory. The connection may seem incontrovertible to Haugen and at least perfectly plausible to the prosecutor. But he’s far from convinced.
*
The call from a colleague at the Grunder station comes in just after lunch, within three minutes of Karen leaving an annoyed message on the station’s answering machine, saying she wants to be contacted immediately. They’ve sent out messages to all local stations and all but three have got back to them about potential petty crimes that might be linked to the investigation. Her frustration at no one picking up in Grunder, where the station is manned around the clock, probably made her tone confirm the local officers’ view of the ‘bullies at headquarters’.
When the call comes, Karen leans back and listens with politely concealed impatience to Sergeant Grant Hogan’s explanations about understaffing and toilet breaks, his inevitable griping about PIR and a few convoluted accounts of minor crimes committed in the north-east corner of Heimö during the summer months. Determined as she is not to widen the chasm between central and local police, Karen throws in an ‘mm’ at
the right places while thinking to herself that she should call to check on Sigrid. But a couple of minutes later, Grant Hogan says something that makes her prick up her ears and take her feet off the desk. She waves Karl over and puts her phone down on the desk between them.
‘I’m going to put you on speaker now, Grant, Karl Björken will be listening in. Would you mind repeating that last part, please?’
They listen without interrupting; Karen signals to Karl not to try to rush Grant Hogan’s circuitous retelling. And between all the irrelevant tangents, something emerges that makes Karl wonder whether Viggo Haugen isn’t right for once.
A partially burnt-out house in Ramsviken in the Grunder police district, just two miles north of Langevik. It had happened two days before Oistra; the couple who owned the house had been vacationing in London. Grant Hogan goes on and on about ‘theatre plays and shopping’, ‘newly retired’, ‘missing laptops and jewellery’, ‘remote location with wonderful views’, ‘rising house prices’, ‘the fire seems to have originated in the kitchen curtains’, ‘shocked when they got back’, ‘insurance will cover it’ . . . and finally, ‘no witnesses’.
Karl looks up and meets Karen’s eyes as their colleague on the other end of the line takes a deep breath before continuing.
‘I was actually about to call you. Not about the fire, but I was talking to the leader of one of the shooting teams. Yngve Lingvall’s his name; he and I go way back. I actually hunt a bit myself, when work allows, of course. That’s why he called me in the middle of a hunt, otherwise I don’t think he would’ve bothered.’
‘Called about what?’ Karl impatiently drums his fingers against the desk but stops after a look from Karen.
‘Well, yesterday, one of the guys on the shooting team discovered a wrecked motorcycle in a ravine two miles south of here. Apparently, the bloke’s interested in bikes, so he wanted to collect it for his own use, but Yngve felt they should call us first. He’s a good man, Yngve is. So, I drove out there and had a look and they were right. It’s in the quarry by Kalvmotet, just a mile or two north-west of the station here in Grunder, as a matter of fact.’
Fatal Isles Page 28
