The House That Jack Built

by Jakob Melander

  “So the same profile you’re chasing?”

  “Yes, more or less.” They both fell silent as they drove under the S-train bridge by Ryparken Station. Sanne pulled her cell out of her purse, disappeared into the tiny screen. Lars glanced at the phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Facebook. I just have to . . .” She went quiet. The steady stream of music from the radio continued above the engine noise, the rumbling of the tires. She put down the phone and stared into space.

  “What’s wrong?” he said.

  She put the phone back into her purse and looked away.

  “It was a message from one of my old colleagues in Kolding. She’s asking if I know you — if I know what’s going on.”

  Lars’s shoulders suddenly went heavy. “It’s not hard to guess where that story came from.”

  * * *

  They had reached Hans Knudsens Plads when Sanne’s cell rung. Allan was excited, but his words were lost in all the noise from the car.

  “What was it?” Lars asked after she’d hung up. Sanne bit her lip and looked out the window.

  “Elvir Seferi, one of the guys who gave the Bukoshi brothers an alibi — it turned out to be false. Allan has checked up on him.”

  Lars put the car in gear and crossed the intersection of Jagtvej and Lyngbyvej at Vibenshus.

  “In February there was a break-in at a dental clinic in Valby,” Sanne continued. “There was a single suspect.”

  “Elvir Se —?”

  “Seferi, yes. During the break-in, several litres of glutaraldehyde were stolen. Dentists apparently use it for cleaning their instruments.”

  “Was he charged?”

  “No, Meriton Bukoshi gave him an alibi and there was no physical evidence. Also —” Sanne pushed her hair behind her ear. “Allan has also discovered what Elvir did for a living before he fled — Kosovo, I mean.”

  Lars didn’t say anything, waiting for her to continue.

  “He was a veterinary surgeon.”

  Chapter 44

  Maria stood with her hand on the garden gate. It was a warm evening, and the thin cardigan made the sweat trickle under her arms. Or was it the thought of meeting Christian’s parents? The evening sun drew gold lines across the pale blue sky. There was an almost imperceptible smell of salt in the breeze that blew in from Øresund.

  Christian had pestered her for days. It was almost getting embarrassing, the way she’d had to resist. But it was far too early. She didn’t even know what she wanted herself. That was probably the reason she had gotten upset when she found him at home with Dad.

  The air was heavy with lilacs. Maria leaned her head back, breathed in the sweet smell of flowers mixed with the fresh-cut grass. Her blood was racing, her body sang.

  She straightened her hair, swallowed, then pushed down the handle on the garden gate.

  Christian’s parents lived in an enormous red-brick house covered by layers of green ivy and with deep red flowers along one wall. The house was on Ole Olsens Allé, a stone’s throw from Gentofte Hospital.

  A ghostly figure moved behind one of the enormous windows, then withdrew at the exact moment she spotted it. Maria was sweating again. The small bouquet of flowers in her hand, a present for the hostess, Christian’s mom, suddenly looked like she’d picked it up from the garbage back home at her father’s.

  Christian opened the door before she could ring the bell. He looked good as usual in his fitted jeans and loose white shirt. His hair was carelessly tousled. He winked at her, pulled her inside, and gave her a deep kiss.

  “Mom, Dad. Maria’s here.”

  She blushed. Her stomach refused to settle. She tugged at his shirt to get him to stop, but he just laughed, letting his lips brush her cheek. He placed an arm around the small of her back and led her into the house. She heard footsteps on the second floor.

  “Welcome.” His mom’s voice was no more than a whisper, just as thin as the grey cardigan over her shoulders. The top button nearly reached her chin. She rubbed her hands together before extending her right arm.

  Maria shook her hand: a pale, dry echo of a handshake.

  “This is my mom, Margit.” Hidden behind her back, Christian’s hand moved down to squeeze her buttock. The contact sent electricity pulsing through her.

  “Thanks for inviting me.” She held out the flowers, bit her lip. A thin smile creased Margit’s face, then it was gone.

  Christian laughed. He held her arm firmly, spun her around.

  “And this is Ditlev.”

  Ditlev came down the stairs in a blue-and-white-striped shirt and worn jeans. There was a hint of a dark red silk cravat around his neck. His prominent forehead was wrinkled and tanned from too much sun; his eyes hard and hungry.

  “Well, what do you know?” He looked her up and down. “The boy has inherited his father’s good taste.” He clicked his tongue. “Welcome. Time for us to have a drink.”

  On the terrace a small table was set with glasses, bowls of nuts, and a bottle of rosé in a wine bucket. The ice cubes sparkled in the sun. Patches of sweat were spreading under Maria’s arms. Now she couldn’t take off her cardigan. Her heart was racing.

  Ditlev asked Christian to open the wine and pour it.

  “My son tells me your dad is in the police. Homicide?”

  Maria nodded.

  “Fascinating job. Should maybe be better paid?” Ditlev winked.

  “Stop it, Dad.” Christian placed a glass each in front of Maria and Ditlev, then went back to pour wine for himself and his mom. Panic set in every time Christian was more than a few steps away. She held her arms by her side, tried keeping her body still. She was trembling uncontrollably.

  Margit said nothing, while Ditlev’s sticky gaze practically devoured her.

  Christian’s dad laughed, drank wine, and ate nuts in a steady stream as he talked.

  “The boy has alway been morbidly fascinated by police work. Well, you bloody have.” He raised his voice when Christian tried to protest. Ditlev leaned over the table, placing his entire weight on his elbow. The teakwood tabletop creaked beneath him as he lowered his voice. “He couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve when he came home and announced that we had a killer in the neighbourhood. He had found a bone in someone’s garden over by — Søbredden, isn’t that right?”

  Christian turned his back to them. Why was he making her sit alone with them?

  “Did you ever manage to show the bone to the police?” Ditlev laughed. “Okay, he’s angry now. Never mind him. I’m sure we can have a good time anyway.” He smiled invitingly. “Now where were we? The bone, yes. We had to spend several days convincing him that it was from a dog. Crazy kid. Cheers.” He took a drink, laughed.

  Margit sipped from her glass, toyed with the hem of her skirt. “I think dinner’s ready now.”

  They ate inside. It was easier to talk in there, undisturbed, as Ditlev put it. Margit drifted back and forth between the living room and the kitchen, carrying in carafes of water and various delicacies that Ditlev insisted Maria try. Neither Ditlev nor Christian seemed to take further notice of Christian’s mom. A creature without body, a spirit floating around the table without quite being let into the circle. Christian didn’t say much. It was Ditlev who kept the conversation going, offering Maria new dishes, more wine.

  Before dessert he got up. “Now let’s have a proper glass of wine. I’ll just run down to the cellar.”

  Margit got up, began collecting the plates.

  “Let me help.” Maria grabbed a tray and the side plates. Margit opened her mouth. She mumbled something unintelligible. Maria figured it was an appeal for her to stay seated, but she insisted on helping her clear the table. Christian’s eyes bore into her back. Was he angry that she was helping out? It didn’t make any sense. Everything was so different here.

 
The kitchen was a lavish space with brightly glazed floor tiles, inch-thick beechwood tabletops, and glass cabinets on every wall. Ditlev had purchased the enormous porcelain sink in France, Christian had told her. Above the sink was a gigantic window with a view of the garden, vibrant and enchanting in the twilight. She placed the tray and plates on the counter, turned on the water, leaned over the sink, and started rinsing.

  The splashing water drowned out all other sound: the low, classical music in the background, engine noise from the road, Margit and Christian exchanging monosyllables in the living room. She rinsed gravy and food scraps into the sink, where they accumulated into a brown mush around the drain.

  Suddenly she sensed something right behind her, then felt someone’s hot, heavy breath on her neck. She only managed a half turn before greedy hands grabbed her breasts.

  “Christian?” she whispered.

  “Christian? He doesn’t have the balls for this!” The voice seethed with arousal. A hand moved over her stomach, buried itself into her skirt.

  Nausea rose up in her throat. She stood petrified against the porcelain sink while Ditlev’s greasy cauliflower nose chafed her neck. A section of the living room reflected in the dark window. She didn’t dare say anything; she hardly took a breath. Where was everyone?

  Just then, Christian stepped into the kitchen. Her eyes widened in a silent plea for help. He stopped in the doorway when he spotted them. His eyes were empty. A chill sent icy knives through her.

  Margit appeared behind him with her arms full. She looked down at the floor, tripped through the kitchen, and put the plates down on the table next to her husband and Maria.

  “Are we having coffee with dessert?” she asked, and then was on her way out again.

  Ditlev let go of her. He stroked his greasy hair back with one hand, adjusted his fly with the other. A single drop of saliva bubbled in the corner of his mouth. He gave her a lecherous look, then turned his back to her and walked over to his son, patting him on the shoulder.

  “I found us a bottle of Pomerol, 2001. Chateau l’Évangile.”

  Christian didn’t look at her; he just followed his dad into the living room without a word.

  Chapter 45

  “I’m just going to buy some cigarettes.” Lars got out, handed her the keys. “It will only take a minute.”

  Sanne nodded, locked the car. Lars ran into the corner store at number 4. It was the young guy behind the counter again.

  “Two twenty packs of King’s Blue?” he asked. The pimples quivered on his chin.

  Lars nodded. Then he thought about the empty cupboards upstairs. “Hey, do you sell wine?”

  “Sure, but don’t you think you should go to Føtex instead? If she’s the one you’re taking upstairs, I don’t think our booze is good enough.” He laughed.

  Lars’s gaze wandered. Sanne stood on the sidewalk, waved at him.

  “That’s not — oh, to hell with it. Give me the best bottle you’ve got.”

  “Sure. This one, I guess.” The guy placed a bottle on the counter next to the two packs of cigarettes. Lars paid without looking at the label.

  Sanne raised an eyebrow when he came out of the store. “Are we having wine?”

  “If you feel like it. I can take your car in tomorrow.” His cheeks warmed. “I didn’t mean —”

  She laughed. He liked it when she laughed.

  “Just one glass,” she said.

  They walked up the stairs. Lars put the key in the lock, said a little prayer that Maria hadn’t left the apartment in a state of disaster, and then turned around.

  “I have literally just moved in,” he apologized, but it didn’t look like Maria had left behind a big mess. Both the bathroom and the kitchen looked presentable.

  Sanne sat down on the sofa, while Lars fetched two glasses from the kitchen and opened the bottle of wine. Sanne looked around the living room.

  “How’s it going?” she asked. “With the divorce, I mean?”

  “Well, we speak as little as possible. It’s best like that.”

  “And Ulrik?”

  “I avoid him.” He poured them both a glass. He considered for a moment whether he should tell her about the problems selling the house. But there were only a few subjects more boring than property sales and equity. Instead, he raised his glass.

  “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” Sanne grimaced as she took a sip. “Well, it’s not exactly a Chateau L’Évangile.”

  “A what?”

  “Chateau l’Évangile. A wine from Pomerol, Bordeaux. It’s close to Pétrus. Do you know it?”

  Lars shook his head. Sanne took another sip.

  “It’s not that bad,” she said. Then she burst out laughing.

  “Are you some kind of wine expert?”

  “Martin would certainly like to be. He’s always reading about it on the Internet. But I haven’t tried that one. The name just stuck.” She dried her eyes, put the glass down, and looked at him. “Just let me know if you don’t want to talk about it. About the complaint.”

  Lars shrugged. “Ask away.”

  “Well, I don’t understand . . . you and Ulrik . . .” She hesitated. “You’re — adversaries. But what’s the deal with this complaint? Kim A doesn’t have anything to do with you and Ulrik, does he?”

  Lars was biting his cheek, thinking. The alcohol burned in his mouth.

  “It’s a long story. It goes back nearly twenty years.”

  Sanne looked at him, waited. He sighed.

  “In 1993, both Ulrik and I had graduated from the police academy and started probationer duty at Station One. On May 18, after the referendum on the Maastricht Treaty for the European Community, we were on our usual patrol downtown. This was early in the evening, mind you, before our colleagues fired into the demonstration. As the evening wore on we realized it was getting more and more violent on Nørrebro, but we were told to keep to this side of the lakes, by the intersection at Frederiksborggade and Nørre Farimagsgade. Just when the fighting was at its worst, a riot police officer, Kim A, comes running toward us with someone in handcuffs. He opens the door, practically throws the young guy into the back, and starts searching him and swearing at him, saying all sorts of nasty things. The other guy is pretty wound up too and starts shouting back. Ulrik tries to calm them down. Kim A starts pushing the guy and he pushes back. All of a sudden, Kim A punches him in the stomach. He doubles up right there in the back seat, gasping for air. I looked at Kim A in the rear-view mirror and told him that if he laid another hand on him, I’d drive us straight to the station and report him for assault. You should have seen his face. Then Ulrik asked what the guy was being arrested for. Kim A mumbled something, but kept staring at me in the rearview mirror.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “He let the guy go. And then he just sat there. For two minutes, staring me down. After that he got out of the car and left, out toward Nørrebro.” Lars shrugged. “For a few months, he tried to get the better of me. But Ulrik had seen everything, so he risked being reported for assault. There’s been bad blood ever since. This is the first time Kim A’s worked on an investigation that I’m leading. It was bound to go wrong. On the other hand, you would think that after nearly twenty years . . .”

  Sanne was looking out the window. “In Kolding, some of the usual suspects occasionally get a once-over in a patrol car. Not everyone does it — I have never taken part. But I know it happens. And generally, they deserve it.”

  “Maybe I see it from a different perspective.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Lars hesitated. Sooner or later she would find out. She might as well hear it from him. “Before I joined the force, when I was in high school, I was a punk. This was just at the beginning of the squatter’s movement. I helped occupy a few houses.”

  The glass rattled as Sanne set it
down on the table.

  “Easy.” He put his hands up, tried laughing. “I haven’t thrown stones or dropped toilets out of windows or anything.”

  She looked him in the eyes, held his gaze for a long time. “Tell me.”

  It was in the 1980s. The nuclear threat, the economical ruptures following the oil crisis in the 1970s, youth unemployment. There was nothing to do if you couldn’t quite bring yourself to conform. Years earlier, the first punks had proven that it was possible to start a movement, create your own scene. It started out on Nørrebro, before Lars was old enough to participate. First an abandoned bread factory, then a derelict, empty factory that in happier days had produced bicycle tires — he’d read about the movement in the papers, heard it on the radio. His mom encouraged him to participate, to rebel. But he had no ideology, no political conscience, only a vague need for something to happen, though he did not know what. It was more out of defiance that he was attracted to the activity and vibe around the young punks and squatters. Something was happening here; people were trying to get an alternative scene going, something untainted by the adults’ eternal ideological trench warfare. There was colour, life, parties. There was no violence back then either, nobody threw stones or Molotov cocktails. It was just a group of rootless kids who wanted something different. And then there was the music: wild and intense; hard, fast, and frenetic. Beautiful as a rock slide and filled with the poetry of destruction. It tore away the dust and the haze that numbed the senses, liberated the mind and exposed the bleeding flesh. He had heard the punk band Sods on the radio, and another that called themselves Bollocks. And then there was Ballet Mécanique. And Kliché.

  At the end of October 1981, he read about a demonstration for a youth house. It was a dark day. Heavy grey clouds were suspended above the flatbed truck that was being used as a makeshift stage. It looked so small in front of the enormous City Hall. A trio with short hair and leather jackets was playing hardcore punk. The wind hurled the sounds back and forth across the large open square. A number 6 bus pulled into the square from Vesterbrogade, and the passengers were staring thunderstruck at the motley crowd shuddering in front of City Hall. It had been announced that the demonstrators would walk to Nørrebro, but when the punk band finished their set, instructions were shouted into megaphones for people to follow those in the front. The crowd started moving, picking up speed, and suddenly everyone sprinted down Vesterbrogade. The police officers assigned to monitor the demonstration were caught completely off guard; they couldn’t keep up. Several hundred people tore down one of the widest and busiest streets in Copenhagen.