Fatal Isles

by Maria Adolfsson

  ‘I’m listening,’ he says.

  ‘Well, we have an older woman, murdered in her home, without any signs of a forced entry or sexual violence. Someone seems to have just walked in, killed her and left. According to the coroner, it happened the night before last and we haven’t been able to establish a motive or find any witnesses.’

  ‘And what makes you think I can help?’

  Evald Johannisen’s surprise is genuine. For his cousin to call and talk about himself and brag about everything from work to his children would be perfectly normal, but this isn’t. It actually sounds like Hasse’s asking him for help.

  ‘Well, the thing is the daughter, who’s naturally both shocked and upset, has told us the Doggerland police have been in contact with her, trying to reach her mother. The woman has apparently been away on some kind of hike in Spain and someone at your end has been trying to get hold of her repeatedly, according to the daughter.’

  ‘Our end? Why would we . . .’

  Before he can finish, Evald Johannisen realises who has been trying to call and who the murdered woman is. Even so, he asks the question.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘The victim, you mean? Disa Brinckmann.’

  80

  The fluorescent lights in the east corridor on the third floor of the Dunker police headquarters flicker before turning on, spreading their cold light over the empty office. Evald Johannisen walks straight over to his desk and starts his computer before plodding out to the kitchenette, picking up a mug from the drying rack and pushing the button marked double cappuccino. He looks at his watch and sighs.

  Disa Brinckmann.

  Evald had made the connection before Cousin Hasse even said the name. After all, he’d read Karen’s report twice. Thoroughly. Granted, mostly to find mistakes and material for scornful comments, but even so, enough of it had stuck, despite the fact that he’d considered it utter lunacy. But then Hasse had said the thing that made Evald Johannisen throw his duvet aside and get out of bed.

  How many old dears really went hiking in Spain?

  And no matter how badly Johannisen wished it were otherwise, it simply couldn’t be a coincidence that two people connected to the case had been murdered. And now he was going to have to contact Eiken. Goddamn it.

  His wife had offered no comment when her husband, who just an hour earlier had been too tired to make love to her for the first time since he collapsed at work, suddenly and without explanation climbed out of bed, got dressed and left the house. Instead of pestering him with questions and admonitions, she’d calmly turned her bedside lamp off, turned back onto her side and gone back to sleep. Ragna Johannisen has been married to Evald for almost forty years. She knows there’s no point.

  *

  Now he’s leaning back in his office chair, eyes closed. He’s skimmed the report a third time and found what he was looking for. No, it can’t be a coincidence, he’s sure of that. Exactly what’s going on is less clear, but Evald Johannisen’s convinced there’s a connection. Despite ailments, angina and apparently now impotence as well, he’s still detective enough to know when things are linked. It’s no coincidence the woman Karen was trying to reach has now been murdered. Much as he’s loath to admit it, it looks like Eiken was onto something. The question is what? No, he corrects himself, the first question is where that bloody woman is since she’s not answering her phone.

  He dials her number for the third time and is once again put through to her voicemail. Evald Johannisen slams the receiver down so hard that for a split second, he’s worried he might have broken the phone. Just because she’s on leave doesn’t mean she gets to go off grid. Surely even that woman has some sense of responsibility?

  He quickly picks the receiver back up and notes that the phone still seems to be in working order. Then he takes a deep breath and dials Karl Björken’s number.

  Fuck, he thinks while it rings. If Eiken’s right, she’s going to make me swallow it until I retire.

  ‘Hey there, Evald,’ Karl answers, true to form.

  ‘How soon can you be here?’

  ‘Yes, we’re having a lovely evening, thank you for asking,’ Karl replies sardonically. ‘The kids are asleep and . . .’

  ‘I’m serious. How long will it take you to get over here?’

  A brief silence on the other end.

  ‘Give me half an hour.’

  ‘OK. Just one thing: do you know if Eiken’s left already? She said something about France, I think?’

  ‘Karen? Why do you want to . . .?’

  ‘Never fucking mind. Do you know or not?’

  ‘Yes, I think she’s was taking the 10.30 ferry to Esbjerg tonight and driving down from there. What’s this about?’

  But Evald Johannisen doesn’t hear the last part. He’s already ended the call.

  He stares vacantly at the screen, his mind racing. For exactly four minutes he sits stock still, unseeing. Then he leans forward and quickly and types in ‘doggerlines.com’ in the search bar. After a few clicks, he finds the information he needs and picks up the phone.

  Talking to Eiken can probably wait until tomorrow, he ponders while the phone rings. After all, there’s not much they can do right now to figure out the connection between the murders of Disa Brinckmann and Susanne Smeed. Naturally, the very best thing would be if he could sort everything out without her help. She would be furious.

  But an inexplicable sense of unease has begun to spread inside Evald Johannisen. He can feel it in the pit of his stomach while he listens, with mounting exasperation, to a pre-recorded voice on the other end, assuring him he’s in line and that it will soon be his turn. There must be some other bloody way to get through to the ferry company than to call customer services. The problem is that in the middle of the night, with no senior managers around, he doesn’t know where to look. On the other hand, getting the information he needs shouldn’t require top brass intervention. It’s trivial, really, and could probably just as easily wait until tomorrow.

  If not for that nagging feeling that time is, in fact, of the essence.

  81

  Five minutes later, Karen has walked down a hallway lined with flashing fruit machines and is now surrounded by loud dance music, laughter and people contributing to the unbearable noise level by shouting to make themselves heard. The baseline thuds in her chest as she pushes though the crowded room as quickly as she’s able.

  It’s not really out of my way, she’d told herself. I’ll just swing by and see if I can spot her. Make sure she’s OK. Now, she realises her mission is doomed to fail. Aside from the jostling and the noise, the shipping company has also decided that appropriate lighting consists of raking lights from the bar and some kind of strobe light from the dancefloor that’s making her pulse race. Finding anyone in here is clearly impossible. A shove sends her stumbling into a young man who curses loudly when his beer spills.

  ‘Mind where you’re fucking going,’ he roars.

  ‘Sorry, someone pushed me,’ she tries to explain, but then realises he’s already turned away again and is shouting something into the ear of a girl whose face is illuminated by the phone she’s fiddling with. Taking no notice of the guy, she suddenly shrieks and holds her phone out to another girl standing next to her.

  ‘Oh my God, he’s insane, look!’

  ‘Seriously, like, he should fucking . . .’

  Karen doesn’t hear the rest. Instead, she presses on through the horseshoe-shaped room, groaning loudly with relief when she reaches the other side.

  The well-dressed woman with the expensive handbag has apparently tired of the serenity of the upper-deck bar and is now standing in front of one of the fruit machines up ahead.

  What do you know, Karen muses, you hardly look like you need to supplement your income. That being said, she knows a percentage of the shipping company’s regulars are gambling addicts.

  The well-dressed woman doesn’t look like a gambling addict, however; she hasn’t i
nserted so much as a shilling into the machine but rather looks like she’s just studying the unmoving rows of cherries, clocks and sevens. Her black trousers and suit jacket signal money and taste. Not Karen’s taste, granted, but the entire ensemble screams that this is a woman who cares about her appearance. Her hair completes the image. Karen’s own hairstyle doesn’t require frequent visits to the hairdresser and she usually takes care of the many grey hairs in it herself, at home in the bathroom. Yet even so, or maybe precisely because of it, she can clearly see that neither the woman’s tidy bob nor her honey-coloured highlights are the result of home dyeing. Karen experiences a vague sense of unease, studying the woman’s back. There’s something sad, almost anxious about the solitary figure standing dead still, staring at a one-armed bandit.

  *

  I need a smoke after living through that nightmare. Karen takes a backwards glance at the strobe-lit dance floor. One cigarette and then to bed. She sticks her hand in her handbag and digs around but can’t find her packet of cigarettes. When she sinks into a squat with her back against the wall and opens her bag wide, she notices the cold glare of her phone screen and feels her heart skip a beat. Someone has been trying to reach her.

  But it’s not Sigrid calling her. Karen stares incredulously at the screen and the number shining up at her. Three missed calls from a number she knows all too well; the police station switchboard. And one from her mother.

  82

  ‘Good evening, welcome to Dogger Lines, my name is Pie, how can I help you?’

  Why do people insist on reading out an entire bloody essay when they answer the phone these days? Evald thinks to himself, drumming his fingers on his desk.

  Out loud, he says:

  ‘This is Detective Evald Johannisen from the Dogger Police. I need information about your departure from Dunker to Esbjerg, quickly.’

  ‘All right, and what date?’

  ‘Today. Now.’

  A moment of silence.

  ‘You mean the ship that’s on its way to Esbjerg right now?’

  ‘That’s right. I need to know whether a passenger, Karen Eiken Hornby, is on board. If she is, I need to get a message to her urgently.’

  ‘I’m sorry, but we’re actually not allowed to give out information about individual—’

  Evald Johannisen knows what the outcome of this discussion is going to be if he doesn’t nip it in the bud.

  ‘Now you listen to me, sweetheart. I’m sure you’re well aware the police have a right to access every passenger list you have.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pie says diffidently. ‘But we’ve been told not to give out any individual—’

  ‘The lists are digital, aren’t they?’

  ‘Of course,’ she says in a voice that eliminates any doubt that Dogger Lines doesn’t have its paperwork in order.

  ‘Then send me the whole bloody list, and I’ll check it myself. And do it now! Do you have pen and paper?’

  Pie seems to have taken down Johannisen’s address correctly and also seems to have instant access to the requested information, because six minutes later, an email with an attached Excel sheet has landed in his inbox.

  The list is sorted alphabetically; it takes him four seconds to find Karen’s name. He picks up the phone again. This time, he gets through straight away.

  ‘Good evening, welcome to Dogger Lines, my name is Pie, how can I help you?’

  ‘Johannisen again. Thanks for the list, but we’ve already wasted ten minutes, so now you’re going to listen closely and do as I say, OK?’

  ‘OK . . .’ comes the hesitant reply, as though Pie is as scared of promising things blindly as she is of denying the authoritative voice on the other end anything it wants.

  ‘As I said, I need to get in touch with a passenger on the ferry we talked about immediately. I’ve been trying to call her, but she’s not picking up.’

  ‘No, the reception on board tends to come and go.’

  ‘So what I want is for the crew to call out for her over the speakers, or go to her cabin or whatever they need to do to find her and make sure she calls me.’

  ‘No problem,’ Pie says cheerfully.

  Johannisen’s jaw drops in surprise. First the little bint threatens to deny him the information he could have got anyway by jumping through the required bureaucratic hoops. And now she’s suddenly saying it’s no problem.

  ‘I’ll make sure they send out a passenger announcement. What is your friend’s name?’

  Evald Johannisen almost explodes with indignation.

  ‘Her name is Police Detective Karen Eiken Hornby. And she’s not my friend! Understood?’

  ‘I’m sorry, that was reflex. We have so many people trying to—’

  ‘Sure, whatever, just make sure she gets the message that she needs to call Evald Johannisen as a matter of utmost urgency. She has my number. And so do you, now,’ he adds while typing in the digits and sending them back to Pie via email. ‘If I haven’t heard from her in thirty minutes, I’ll be in touch again.’

  And with that threat, he ends the call.

  83

  Karen stays squatting, muttering curses. She barely notices the looks she’s getting from passers-by and in any event doesn’t care what they think of her. How did this happen? she thinks. I kept my phone with me the whole time. Then she spots the little crossed-out bell symbol and realises she’s turned the sound off. To avoid calls from the police chief inspector and anyone else who might have failed to register that she’s on leave, she muted her phone last night before going to bed. She has no desire to be woken up in the middle of the night while on holiday. And apparently, it had been a wise decision; three calls in the past hour alone. I’m going to have to give the police chief inspector a ring and tell him to update his call lists.

  What worries her is the missed call from her mum. Karen checks the time of the call and realises her mother called just after half eight. And left a voicemail, too. Why would she suddenly call me on a Saturday night? Karen wonders and keys in her voicemail pin; we always talk on Sundays. She impatiently listens to the monotone voice.

  ‘You have two messages. Message one, recorded today at 9.34 a.m.’

  ‘Hi sweetheart, guess where I am! No, you’ll never be able to. Harry and I are in London of all places, visiting his sister, so now we’re considering popping over to see you, too. Harry would love to see Langevik, he says. Just for a couple of days and we won’t be a bother; we can stay in the guesthouse. There’s a ferry from Harwich tomorrow around noon. Call and let me know if you want us to bring anything, otherwise, I’ll see you tomorrow! Love you!’

  Karen lets the phone fall into her lap and stares vacantly straight ahead. Then she blinks and glances at her watch: 12.14 a.m. Should she call now and abort this plan or would it be better to wait until tomorrow morning? Her mum and Harry are probably asleep by now. She hasn’t met the miracle that is Harry Lampard yet, but there’s no doubt her mother has fallen head over heels in her old age. And now they’ve left Costa del Sol without warning to go on some kind tour around Europe, visiting people.

  She decides to fire off a text and follow it up with an early morning phone call. Because the plan definitely needs to be aborted. The mere thought of Eleanor Eiken’s reaction if she were to get to the house in Langevik and find Leo Friis in it fills Karen with horror. Leo, with his poorly trimmed beard, wearing Karen’s sweatpants, which end at his ankles, and much too tight T-shirt with the Doggerland Police logo. At least that’s what he’d looked like when she left him a few hours ago. He was clean, but that’s really all that could be said for him.

  Hi! Would have been great, but I’m on my way to France so I’ll have to take a rain check. I’ll call you tomorrow. Love K

  The moment she sends the message, she’s struck by another horrifying thought: maybe her mother will decide to head over to her former homeland despite her daughter not being there. Stay in the house for a few days and show Harry around Langevik on her own. After all, Eleanor Ei
ken lived there for forty years and the area means a lot to her, even if Estepona has been her home for the past eight years. I need to stop her, Karen thinks, I’ll have to call her the moment I wake up. Why on earth does this have to happen right now?

  The urge to smoke has become overwhelming; she needs a cigarette or two to calm her nerves before she heads down to the cabin. She frantically roots through her handbag for her cigarettes and lighter, finally finds both and gets up from her squat. Her legs are practically numb; she shakes them to get the circulation going as she walks toward the door leading out on deck.

  84

  When Karl Björken pushes open the glass door to the east corridor on the third floor of the Dunker police headquarters, exactly twenty-six minutes have passed since Johannisen called. It’s now 12.16 a.m. as he approaches Evald Johannisen’s desk with a grim look on his face.

  ‘What the fuck’s going on?’ he says, even though he can plainly see his colleague has a receiver pressed to his ear.

  Johannisen turns to him and hangs up with a shake of his head.

  ‘That old witch isn’t picking up.’

  ‘Old witch?’

  ‘Eiken. I’ve been trying for an hour.’

  Karl Björken doesn’t comment on how it’s rather contradictory of Johannisen to be using that expression for someone fifteen years younger than himself.

  ‘I guess she’s asleep. Do you realise what time it is? What’s this about?’

  ‘Disa Brinckmann,’ Johannisen says darkly. ‘She’s been murdered.’

  For a few seconds, Karl Björken stares blankly at his colleague. Then the penny seems to slowly drop: first the tentative connection, then the unwelcome definitive insight.

  ‘Anne Crosby,’ he says and sits down.

  ‘The sister,’ Johannisen sighs, remembering how he’d snickered at that section of Karen’s report. ‘Though we obviously can’t be sure it’s her,’ he says without conviction.

  ‘Either way, she’s the link between the victims. Karen wanted to check her out, but both Haugen and the prosecutor told her no. I didn’t listen, either; I was dead sure it was Kvanne. We’ve been idiots!’