The House That Jack Built

by Jakob Melander

  “Rega P1? And an NAD 3020? Cool.” He nodded. “Low-end classics.”

  “I didn’t think anyone of your generation listened to LPs anymore.”

  “Well, actually I listen to MP3s mostly. But I do have a Pro-Ject Xtension, a Marantz PM-11S2, and a couple of B&W 804 Diamonds at home.”

  Lars had heard a demo of the 804 Diamonds a few years back. The speakers were undoubtedly a sound engineer’s wet dream, but the sound they produced was far removed from what he would call music. Wooden and dead. He pictured a teenager’s room, piled with ridiculously expensive hi-fi equipment. But Maria’s boyfriend didn’t look like someone who lived in the stereotypical dank basement. Presumably he had an entire floor of his parent’s villa in Hellerup at his disposal.

  Suddenly the boy turned around, held out his hand.

  “Christian. I’ve just graduated from Øregård High School.”

  Lars rolled his eyes. Yes, thanks very much, he knew where his own daughter went to school. He shook the outstretched hand. The boy had a powerful handshake.

  “Lars.” He nodded. “Sit down. I’ll get a glass.”

  Christian grinned, pulled out a pack of Benson & Hedges. It was the kind the yuppies and the really stylish fashion punks smoked back in the 1980s. Lars suddenly had a flashback of himself as a seventeen-year-old at Floss. Depeche Mode and Bowie videos blaring on the TV behind the bar. Happy hour — strong beers and lines in the washroom.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” Christian asked.

  Lars nodded at the ashtray and disappeared into the kitchen with his plate of half-eaten tortellini.

  When he came back with a glass for Christian, the boy was on the floor flipping through his record collection.

  “Not exactly the latest stuff, eh?” Lars was about to protest but Christian waved his hand. “It’s cool. You have some great stuff. And old Stones,” he exclaimed, holding up Beggars Banquet, before taking the disc out of its inner sleeve. “Original packaging. Do you know how much this is worth?”

  Lars plopped down on the sofa, poured wine for both of them. He nodded.

  “I mean, it’s not going to secure your pension,” Christian continued. “But it should bring in a few thousand. If you sell it to the right people, that is. And it’s in excellent condition.” Christian let the LP spin around his two fingers, studied both sides. “The jacket too.”

  “I’m more interested in the music. Do you know the album?” Lars slid the glass toward him.

  Christian tapped his cigarette, crossed his legs on the floor.

  “Yeah, I find it a bit boring.” He took a sip of wine. His lips twitched slightly, then he laughed and took another drink.

  “It’s just rhythm ’n’ blues,” Lars said. What did the kid want? Progressive rock? “And they still manage to mix in samba, country, and music hall. Not too bad, eh.”

  Christian shrugged. “I’ve always preferred this one.” He picked up Let it Bleed from the stack. “Wow, first edition too?”

  Lars nodded. He couldn’t help laughing.

  “One of the first,” he said. “Check out the number on the label.”

  “And with a hole in the cover to view the inner sleeve. Blue for stereo.” Christian stuck his finger through the hole. “Do you have the poster?”

  Originally, the record came with a poster, but one of the many previous owners had lost it, given it away, pissed on it. How should he know?

  “Unfortunately not.”

  Christian got up on his knees, sent Lars a questioning look before lifting the pickup from the Lou Reed album and putting on Let it Bleed. Lars waited for the falling Fender Rhodes–like guitar chords that opened “Gimme Shelter,” but instead the room was filled with a raw guitar boogie.

  “‘Midnight Rambler’?”

  Christian gave him a crooked smile.

  Lars laughed. This was like being eighteen again. “You think Beggars Banquet is too monotonous? And then you play the most Banquet-like track on the entire album?”

  Christian was sitting cross-legged again. The glow from his cigarette reflected in his eyes; his face disappeared in a cloud of smoke.

  Lars got up. “You’ve got to hear this cool version of ‘Midnight Rambler.’ He stepped over the chairs and record covers on the floor, hunched down next to Christian and found Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out.

  “This,” he said, “this is fantastic. Brian Jones has just died. They are on their first tour with Mick Taylor. This is the Stones at their best, before Altamont. You’ve heard of Altamont, right?”

  “Yeah, of course. We’ve got an old hippie for history. But why do you listen to music from the sixties? You’re not that old, are you?”

  “Thanks a lot! When I was your age, it was all punk and new wave, but I gradually discovered that music from the late sixties and early seventies — the Stones and Zeppelin — had the same vibe. But I can still listen to Joy Division.”

  He took Let it Bleed off the turntable and put on Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out. Call and response, harmonica and audience, drums and guitar. Christian began to rock back and forth, moving his lips to Mick Jagger’s vocals.

  I’m talkin’ ’bout the Midnight Rambler,

  Ev’rybody got to go

  Lars closed his eyes. “What’s so cool about this version is the break in the middle section where the guitars battle and Jagger sounds like an old Indian chanting and doing a sun dance.”

  Christian raised his eyebrows but said nothing. They sat quietly, listened.

  On the turntable, the band joined in with heavy beats at the end of each of Jagger’s lines.

  I’m called a hit-n-run raper, in anger . . .

  Or just a knife-sharpened tippie-toe . . .

  Or just a shoot-em-dead, brain-bell jangler

  Everybody got to go

  “You know this is about the Boston strangler, right?” Christian lit another Benson & Hedges. His eyes were shining.

  Did he know. He had stumbled upon Let it Bleed when he entered the police academy, where they had studied case material on the Boston strangler. He’d gotten shivers down his spine when he discovered the connection.

  “Do you think DeSalvo murdered all of them?” Christian asked.

  Lars was lying on the floor, staring up at the worn, nicotine-yellow stucco on the ceiling. He didn’t need to think back.

  “Hmmm. Thirteen women murdered and sexually assaulted between 1962 and 1964. They varied in age, between nineteen and eighty-five, as far as I recall. Some were strangled with nylons, a couple were stabbed. One died of a heart attack when he grabbed her.” Lars shrugged. “I don’t know. There were details of the crime scenes that DeSalvo knew about, details that hadn’t been released to the press. Still, there were massive differences in the way the murders were carried out. And there’s the victims’ ages. The young ones were very young, right? And at the other end of the scale, from their mid-fifties and up to eighty-five. It doesn’t sound like the same killer. Anyway, a couple of months ago the Boston police linked DeSalvo’s DNA to the last and youngest victim. So he did kill at least one of them.”

  “What about — what are they calling him? The Sandman?”

  Lars didn’t answer. He stared at the ceiling through the billowing cigarette smoke. “Midnight Rambler” lapsed into “Sympathy for the Devil.” Talk about the devil.

  “Why is a young guy like you interested in such morbi —”

  Suddenly Maria was standing in the living room. Neither of them had heard the door open.

  “What are you doing? I thought we were going to celebrate your graduation?” She stared dark-eyed at Christian.

  Christian got to his feet, smoothed out his shirt. He sent her a wry smile.

  “Didn’t we agree to meet here?” He went to kiss her.

  Maria twisted away from him. “I’ve been sitting in ZeZe with the same club
soda for over an hour. You didn’t take my calls?”

  Lars held out a hand, wanting to help smooth things over. Maria looked at him, and his hand fell. He too had crossed some kind of line — that much was clear. But which?

  “Darling.” In two long steps Christian was in the corner where Lars had placed the bouquet. “These are for you.”

  Maria tossed her head but leaned forward to smell the flowers. Her face softened. “Thanks.” She gave him a little kiss. “Come on.”

  They disappeared into the kitchen. Lars was alone in the living room with his cigarettes, half a bottle of Ripasso, and his forty-year-old records.

  Maybe it was just time for bed?

  August 1944

  The kitchen window is open. The checkered curtains hang motionless on the warm summer evening. Twilight is descending, but a faint afterglow still clings to the sky. She’s sitting on the stool in the corner by the stove, her heart fluttering in her chest. He’s making the crossing tonight. Father has arranged for a boat to Sweden, agreed to the time and place with one of the local fishermen. Jack will send word when she can join him. Her head is light, she has a strange feeling in her stomach, as though something inside her is going to break.

  She gets up, runs a finger along the brass pipe that circles the black cast-iron stove. She starts at a sudden vision of a deathly pale face with blood running down the cheeks appearing in the dim light in the corner behind the stove.

  “Jack?” she whispers. Then she clenches her teeth. Jack is hiding in the bottom of a fishing jolly in Øresund. In an hour, he’ll be safely in Sweden, and in a month or two she’ll be in his arms again. En route to Stockholm or London, she’ll be listening to the silly odes he sings to her eyes. She shakes her head. No one can find rhymes for grey-blue and green like Jack. He’s the first person who has been able to name her imperfections without her getting upset.

  She laughs to herself. A young girl’s fantasy, dreamy as the last embers of the purple light that is fading in the evening sky.

  She gets up, dances, hums. The curtains, the dish towel, the entire kitchen still smells of the basket of Danish meatballs she made for Father and Jack to take with them. From the living room, she hears the soothing clicks of Mother’s knitting needles as they knock together with soporific regularity. Everything is calm; no evil can reach them. What does it matter that nations are crumbling all around them? As long as they have love, everything else is so profoundly trivial.

  Outside, the garden gate opens and shuts. Could Father be returning already? The steps on the garden path are firm like Father’s but more supple, rapid. A young man? Her heart leaps inside of her.

  No, it can’t be him. He would only come back if something went wrong. And not in full view of the entire neighbourhood. Her proud Jack would come crawling through the bushes at the back of the garden, in from the swamp where no one could see him.

  At the front door the knocker strikes the brass fitting. In the living room, Mother gets up with some difficulty, puts down her knitting. Laura is on the kitchen floor, quiet as a mouse, wishing time would stand still.

  Mother’s voice whispers through the house. It’s for her. Arno. Can she go out to the garden?

  Like a sleepwalker she leaves the kitchen, dragging her feet in her worn clogs. Her gaze is lowered, her blood filled with ice. She doesn’t want to. And yet she must. She cannot. But she has to. Her mother has returned to her knitting and the soft chair in the corner.

  He stands under the old copper beech, the one that is practically strangled by the climbing hydrangea. He calls her, standing there in his uniform with his hands folded in front of him. In his shiny boots, riding pants, and cap. Why is he here tonight? She doesn’t want to be seen with a member of the HIPO Corps, not even if he is an old classmate.

  He starts talking before she’s even reached him. His voice is thick, his cheeks flushed. He talks about the two of them, about the future, about happiness and marriage, children. But she cannot — she will not — listen. Arno is pleading. He’s down on his knees. But she doesn’t notice Arno. And she knows he can sense it, that she’s somewhere else.

  And then, as he gets up, his eyes harden. The tears have left dark lines on his cheeks. The vision returns, the one she had inside the kitchen. Arno’s face is ashen, the pale face of a corpse in the white night. And she does not want to but must look all the same. Arno’s hands open to expose the horrible secret they hold.

  Two eyes with sea-grey pupils, two eyes that — clear and alive and full of expectation and love — got drunk on the sight of her only a few hours earlier. She can still see herself, as Jack saw her, reflected in the dead iris and all the white that is now caked in blood with the severed nerve endings resting in Arno’s trembling fingers.

  Then the garden gate squeaks behind Arno. It’s Father returning. He nods briefly at Arno, avoids her gaze. He walks up the garden path and disappears into the house.

  Then she knows.

  The scream comes from deep down inside, rises from her bosom. It tears upwards through flesh, sinew, and bones, passes the tiny life that grows beneath her navel. But when the bloodwind reaches the oral cavity, it has lost all strength.

  Only a faint whimper passes her lips. The sound that comes from the mice in Father’s trap behind the kitchen cupboard in the morning.

  Sunday

  June 22

  Chapter 41

  Lars climbed the many stone steps in the rotunda to the second floor, down the narrow dark red corridor, and through the green door.

  The department was empty. He hurried into his office and closed the door behind him with a silent click. It would soon be over. He would move on and the department could move on without him. Why Kim A had even bothered to file a complaint, he didn’t understand. He threw his blazer over the back of the chair beside the door and sunk into his office chair.

  One final case and it would all be over. He had been here for ten years. Now all he could think about was getting away.

  He plunked his feet on the desk, considered lighting a cigarette despite the smoking ban. He still had a rapist to catch.

  Lars forced himself to watch the DVDs from the surveillance cameras at Nørreport once more. Maybe there was a tiny detail, a microscopic clue in the way he moved, his clothes? Something which, seen with fresh eyes, could break the case? But there was no sudden flash of clarity. The lightning didn’t strike.

  The previous evening was still fresh in his mind. Cigarettes, wine, and records. The Stones. Maria’s boyfriend smoking Benson & Hedges. Something about his hair and eyes, the way he acted. Lars got up and moved to the window.

  The door to Maria’s room had been closed when he got up. Christian’s jacket hadn’t been in the entrance. His shoes were gone too, but maybe he had taken them into Maria’s room? He wasn’t sure. Had he heard the front door open during the night? Not a sound came from her room. He hesitated outside her door, stood with his hand raised, trying to decide if he should knock. Then he had turned on his heels and gone into the shower.

  At the department he could hear his colleagues walking back and forth down the corridor, collecting reports, chatting about suspects being brought in for questioning. But no one knocked on his door. The operation with Lene had not been his idea; in fact, he had been against it. But nothing stuck to someone like failure.

  He glanced at the report from the operation on the table. Brown rings from countless cups of coffee covered the thin sheets in a psychedelic pattern. A photo of the bench in Hans Tavsens Park with white circles marking where Lene had leaned on the bench to get up. Had he seen Christian in a photo? In here? He quickly leafed through the sloping piles on the desk, moved on to the drawers, and pulled out a large pile of black and white photos. The sudden movement caused the photos to sail across the room in a perfect arc, landing with a dry rustling on the floor. A single sheet landed face-up, fluttering haphazardly before s
ettling on the floor by his feet.

  The photographs from Penthouse. Lene dancing with her arms above her head. And in the background, behind the very last person in the row at the bar. There wasn’t much to see, but there was something about the hair, the way he stood. The eyes were pointed down; they weren’t visible. But it certainly could be him.

  He shook his head, threw the photograph on the table. What had he expected? Of course it wasn’t Christian. But what if it was? He shuddered. Christian’s interest in the Boston Strangler, the morbid Stones number. He glanced at the picture, then forced himself to look away. Was that really something you did these days? Talk about serial killers the first time you meet your girlfriend’s dad?

  Barely able to control his shaking fingers, he managed to slip a King’s Blue out of the pack. To hell with the smoking ban. He opened the window, lit up, and took a drag. The nicotine unfurled in his lungs, raced through his bloodstream, hit his brain like a burst of projectiles. He removed a piece of tobacco from his lips, glanced at the picture again.

  Then he picked it up, held it up with two fingers. The height and build were right. A figure dressed in black. Blond locks peeked out from underneath the hood.

  He shot up suddenly, grabbed his jacket and flung open the door.

  The open-plan office was filled with his colleagues now, several of whom he had worked with for longer than he cared to think about. None of them looked up. Frank and Lisa were sitting by Ulrik’s secretary, speaking in low voices. Toke was nowhere to be seen.

  He hurried toward the green door, and ran down the corridor. He practically barged into Sanne at the foot of the stairs. Only a quick stop and an adroit sidestep on her part saved them from colliding.

  “Hi Lars. I’ve been thinking about calling . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Lars fidgeted with the railing. “I’m the one . . . Thanks for dinner. The other night, I mean.” He went quiet. Pull yourself together. “It was nice. Maria had a lovely evening.” Was it Martin, her boyfriend was called? Images of doing the dishes, the silent cab ride home with Maria appeared in his mind’s eye. He clenched his fist.