“Not much,” said Irene. “He picked her up down by the harbour. They went back to one of the flats she and other girls used for clients. It’s in one of the blocks here. She didn’t tell me where it was exactly. Maybe it was the one she fell from. I don’t know. The client called himself Jon. They all do, apparently.”
“What age was he?”
“She wasn’t sure. She thought he was thirty at least, maybe older. But we were speaking English. She had very little Danish and her English wasn’t that good either. I got her to fill out a form.” She opened a drawer in one of the filing cabinets, leafed through a folder and pulled out a single sheet of paper. She gave it to Katrine.
Only six answers, on what was obviously a standard questionnaire, had been filled in: Name, Girlie; age 26; country of origin, The Philippines; Married; immigration status, not divulged.
“Girlie told me another sex worker was attacked five months ago,” said Irene. “She said all the working girls were nervous afterwards. The girl who was attacked was from Thailand. She didn’t go to the police. Girlie said she went to Copenhagen.”
“Do you know the Thai girl’s name?”
Irene shook her head.
“Girlie never came back,” she said. “Do you think she fell over the balcony when she was trying to get away from this man?”
Katrine imagined the scene. Girlie opening the door to a client, recognising him as the man who’d attacked her. Backing away. Trying to make a call for help. His cry of rage as he realised what she was doing, his bull-like charge at her, the phone flying from Girlie’s hand.
“We think he pushed her,” she said. “This is a murder enquiry.”
35.
Tobias made himself a cup of coffee and switched his mind to work.
Two murders; two people who seemed to have vanished from Denmark, if not from the world; two sets of human bones which had materialised in rubbish bins in the city. He would leave Eddy to run the Girlie investigation. He would concentrate on Bogman. Katrine could assist them both. And the bones? The bones could wait until carbon dating told him how old they were.
He was sure Agnes had called or texted Magnus with the urgent request to contact him about Aksel. He trusted his daughter. He didn’t trust Magnus. On the two occasions they’d met, Magnus, in various subtle ways, had shown his disdain for the police. He would drive to the protest camp and find Magnus. The cadaver dog was going to Roligmose. He could stop there as well. See if the dog had sniffed out anything. The wind-farm protest was in North Jutland Police District, where Pernille Madsen was based. He called her from the car, before he set off.
“The Wind Farm protest? We keep an eye on it,” said Pernille. “They haven’t caused any trouble so far. A patrol car drives up there from time to time.” She gave Tobias the co-ordinates for the camp. “Why the interest? Anything I should know?”
“We’re trying to trace a missing girl. Emily Rasmussen. She was the girlfriend of the victim we found in the bog. She was active in the green movement. They both were. There’s a guy up at that camp who knew her. He might know where she is.”
“I saw her details on our system. I saw the television reports as well. You were looking good, Tobias.”
“Thanks.” Tobias wondered how Pernille looked these days. She sounded just the same.
“So you identified your Bogman,” said Pernille. “And now you’re looking for his girlfriend.”
“She’s an elusive girl,” said Tobias.
“Are you sure she’s alive?”
“We’re not sure about anything,” said Tobias. “But she sends emails. We’re waiting to hear where they’re sent from.”
“Thanks for your email about Bruno Holst. You closed that case. Well done.”
“Thanks. What about you? You were working on an assault last time we spoke.”
“Plus two burglaries and a domestic. We’re at least one detective short.”
“Cuts? Same here. There’s a team on round-the-clock watch on the gang we’re pretty sure did the Danske bank raid. Plus we’ve a detective on sick leave.”
Tobias switched on his satnav and began entering the co-ordinates of the camp.
“The assault is taking most of my time,” said Pernille. “The perpetrator is a nasty piece of work. I want to nail him and put him away for a long time. He gagged a sex worker with her own panties and nearly beat her to death. We have DNA and a thumbprint but it doesn’t match any known offenders.”
“Good luck,” said Tobias.
“You too,” said Pernille.
She switched her attention back to the report on the dead prostitute who had been found at Lonstrup. The prostitute who had been dumped in the sea at Hamburg. She had a feeling this case was connected to the cases the profiler, Matt Erikson, had found. She read the autopsy report closely. And there it was. The giveaway detail she thought might be there. Traces of silky threads found in the victim’s teeth. Gagged with her own panties. She drummed on the desk with satisfaction. “You bastard. I’ll get you yet,” she said.
36.
A weather front was rolling in from the west when Tobias reached the forest track leading to the camp. “Save Our Trees: Say No to Turbines” proclaimed the banner strung across the track. Tobias drove underneath it and followed the track for a kilometre until it reached a clearing the size and shape of a football pitch. It seemed to Tobias that trees had already been chopped down to make space for the turbines. Logs were stacked in rows along all four sides of the clearing. Two canvas tents and a wigwam constructed from woven branches stood on the south side, sheltered from the prevailing wind. A wisp of smoke rose from a hole in the ground outside one of the tents. Tobias parked the car and got out. There was no sign of anybody. He walked towards the tents.
A girl with abundant blonde hair emerged from one of the tents. She was wearing green dungarees and hiking boots and carrying a large coffee percolator. She looked relaxed.
“Have you brought the charcoal?” She crouched over the hole in the ground, moved a metal cooking rack to one side, picked up a stick and poked at a smouldering charcoal fire. “We’re running low.” She pushed the rack back into place and put the percolator on it.
“I’m not here about charcoal,” said Tobias. “I’m looking for Aksel.”
The girl stood up. Her expression changed. “Who are you? Why are you looking for him? Anyway, he’s not here.”
Tobias produced his ID.
“This is a peaceful protest,” said the blonde. “We’re not breaking the law.”
“I’m not here about your protest either,” said Tobias. “I want to speak to Aksel about another matter. Can you tell me where to find him?”
She shrugged. “He comes and goes. I don’t know where he is.”
There was the sound of a vehicle coming up the track. A dark blue van turned into the clearing and stopped. A slim figure with long dark hair, and wearing khaki trousers and a camouflage jacket jumped out. It was Magnus. He strode towards Tobias and the girl.
“If you’re looking for Agnes, she isn’t here, Chief Inspector,” he said. “Is something wrong?”
“Didn’t you get her message? She asked you to call me.”
Magnus addressed the girl. “I got charcoal. It’s in the back of the van.” It was clear he intended her to fetch it. She went obediently to the van. Magnus watched her go. He tossed his hair back.
“Why do you want to speak to Aksel?”
“I’m investigating a murder,” said Tobias. “He might know the whereabouts of an essential witness.”
“I don’t know where he is,” said Magnus.
“But you know him?”
Magnus said nothing. He stroked his beard.
“You’ve been seen together,” said Tobias. It was a shot in the dark.
“I might have known you’d be snooping on me,” said Magnus.
Tobias felt like telling Magnus he was not important enough to be snooped on, but merely said,
“Where can I find
him?”
Magnus shrugged. “He’s not here. He could be in Aarhus. He could be in Copenhagen. He could be in Sweden. He hasn’t been here for a while.”
Nor have many other protesters, thought Tobias. It seemed to him a feeble sort of protest. The turbines would probably win. He felt a pang of sympathy for Agnes. She would be disappointed.
The blonde girl came back carrying a large bag of charcoal. She dumped it beside the fire.
“Who is Agnes?” she said.
“Agnes is a green warrior,” said Magnus. He looked uncomfortable. Tobias wanted to punch him.
An ancient bus lumbered into the clearing and stopped. Five young people dismounted, chatting and laughing. They dropped rucksacks beside the bus and headed towards the fire. Tobias guessed they were students. One of them called out, “Any coffee on the go? We’ve come all the way from Esbjerg.”
The atmosphere lightened. The blonde girl said, “You’re welcome. Coffee will be ready soon.”
Tobias showed his ID to the group. “I’m looking for Aksel,” he said. “It’s not connected to this protest.”
“Aksel who?” said a red-haired girl.
“I’m not sure of his second name,” said Tobias. “It might be Schmidt.”
“Where’s he from?”
Tobias said he didn’t know that either.
“You don’t know much,” said the red-haired girl. The rest of the group laughed.
“I wish I knew more,” said Tobias. “Because I think he can help me solve a murder.”
The group fell silent.
“A young man, a green activist, was murdered in a bog at Roligmose fourteen years ago,” said Tobias.
“I saw something about that on television,” said a skinny boy in the Esbjerg group.
“His girlfriend hasn’t been seen since,” said Tobias. “Aksel knew her. I think he might know where she is.”
There was a general shrugging and mutterings of “Don’t know him. Can’t help you.”
The percolator bubbled and gurgled. “Get yourselves mugs,” said Magnus.
The students drifted towards the rucksacks. Magnus went into the wigwam.
“Aksel’s in Aarhus,” said the blonde girl quickly. “In Brabrand. The Gellerup part. First floor, end of a block near City Vest.”
Magnus emerged from the wigwam with two mugs.
“I’ll be off then,” said Tobias.
He looked back when he got to his car. The students were drinking coffee and laughing again. Magnus and the blonde girl appeared to be having an argument.
37.
There was no sign of Karl and the Crime Scene Investigators when Eddy and Katrine emerged from the lift on the eighth floor of the block at Gellerupparken. The flat from which Girlie fell was still sealed off, but the Forensic team had gone. Katrine called Karl Lund.
“We finished at two o’clock this morning,” he said. “I’ll have preliminary results for you in a couple of hours. Busy spot, that flat. Some traffic. I’d say we have the fingerprints and DNA of half the men in Aarhus. Plus three boxes of condoms, three boxes of baby wipes, four vibrators, a two-litre bottle of massage oil, a feather duster, a set of handcuffs and a riding crop.”
“Did you find her phone?”
“We found a phone in the bushes near the block. It’s probably hers. We won’t be sure until we match fingerprints.”
“The killer’s number might be in it,” said Katrine. She crossed her fingers. “And Philippines numbers. We need to contact her next of kin.”
It was not a call Katrine wanted to make.
Eddy had counted five doors down to the other flat that was used as a brothel. He rang the doorbell. There was no reply. He knocked. No reply. He thumped the door. No reply. He shrugged.
“She’s probably sucking a dick somewhere else. Let’s go.”
They went directly to the Forensics laboratory. Karl Lund was dusting a mobile phone for prints. They watched him pass the phone under the UV lamp.
“Clean as a whistle,” said Karl. “The screens on these phones are usually smothered in prints. But not this one. It’s been wiped.”
“It must be her phone,” said Katrine. “Are there Philippines numbers in it?”
“No,” said Karl. “Everything was deleted.”
“Bastard,” said Katrine.
“Clever bastard,” said Eddy. “When a woman’s assaulted, the bastard is usually too drunk or too stupid to get rid of prints or DNA. This bastard is different. My guess is none of the prints or fluid traces we found are his. I hope I’m wrong.”
“You’re right,” said Karl. “If he wipes a mobile phone and deletes all the number before he throws it away, he won’t leave prints anywhere else. He was probably wearing gloves.” He paused. “I bet he’s done this before.”
“We think the same guy beat her up ten days ago,” said Eddy. “He might have left a tiny trace of something, somewhere. But I’m not holding my breath.”
Katrine took a gulp of air into her lungs before she followed Eddy into the autopsy room. She had not yet rid herself of a gagging reflex whenever she entered that cold space that smelled of blood and formaldehyde.
Harry Norsk tipped something into a stainless steel bowl. Katrine looked away.
Harry smiled. “Hi, guys. I see you get a bit green around the gills, Katrine. A sip of brandy usually does the trick.” He pointed to a small white wall cabinet with a green cross on the door.
Eddy grinned. He opened the cupboard, took out a half-bottle of brandy and poured a capful into a glass beaker.
Harry lifted Girlie’s liver from the bowl and placed it on a set of scales.
“This unfortunate woman wasn’t a drinker,” he said. “I bet your liver isn’t as healthy as that, Eddy.”
Katrine was white-faced. Eddy gave her the beaker of brandy.
“She has extensive injuries and bruising,” said Harry. “Five broken ribs, a black eye, bruising on her stomach and inner thighs. These injuries are all about ten days old. I’d say she was still in pain from them. She hadn’t had sex recently. She was probably still too sore. There was no sperm in any orifice. No material or skin under her fingernails. Her neck was broken when she fell. That’s what killed her.”
We killed her, thought Katrine. If we stayed with her in the hospital, she’d still be alive. She glanced at Eddy. He was staring at the bloodless body on the stainless steel table.
“We’ll catch him,” he said. “We’ll find the fucker who did this.”
Katrine thought it sounded like a promise.
When she got back to the office, an envelope from registry was in her pigeonhole. Inside was a file labelled Lennart Praetorius. She began reading it as she walked to her desk. She was still absorbed when Eddy looked over her shoulder.
“The grandparents mention the watch,” she said. “That would have been enough to identify Bogman.”
“But not who killed him,” said Eddy. He perched on her desk. “Anything else interesting?”
“They hadn’t seen him since May 1998,” said Katrine. “They spoke to him on the phone about four months after that, perhaps longer. Their contact with him was intermittent. They went to the police again in February 2001. It’s pretty much what they told the boss and me on Sunday. There’s not much else. Lennart didn’t turn up on any database. The only known address for him was the grandparents’ house in Helsinger.” She paused. “But this is interesting. His last call to them was from a mobile phone, a new one, the grandparents said. Lennart told them he’d only just got it. But he didn’t give them the number. The call ended abruptly. Lennart said something like, “Oh, there’s the ambulance coming down the track. That’s Emily, back from the lily pond. Bye.”
“The lily pond? Sounds like a Chinese take-away,” said Eddy.
“The police checked calls to the grandparents landline from mobile phones,” said Katrine. “There weren’t many. An electrician, someone from their church, a plumber and one number which was defunct.” Katrine’
s voice slowed as she relayed the information to Eddy. “The phone company said the mobile hadn’t been topped up and no calls had been made since the date of the call to the grandparents on September 21st, 1998. At 9.30pm.” Her voice quickened with excitement. “They gave the co-ordinates of the nearest base station when he made that call.”
Eddy sprang off his perch and gripped Katrine’s shoulder as she brought a map up on her computer screen.
“Zoom out,” he said. “Let’s see what’s nearby.”
Katrine enlarged the area on the map around the base station. In the left hand corner of the screen they saw Roligmose.
“I’ll call the boss,” said Eddy.
Tobias was watching the cadaver dog, an incongruously cheerful golden spaniel, and her handler, a craggy, former Special Forces soldier, moving across the bog. The dog worked in twenty-minute bursts, straining on the leash, nose to ground. The sun was low in the sky, below a bank of dark grey cloud. Tobias thought he could smell rain coming, in the way the spaniel, now making its way back to the dog-van, could smell a decomposing corpse. He heard the familiar buzz of his phone, put it to his ear, listened to Eddy telling him about Lennart’s last call to his grandparents.
“Lennart must have made the call from Roligmose,” said Eddy. “It’s in the area covered by the nearest mast. The call ended abruptly. Lennart said, “Bye now. I see Emily coming back from the lily pond.” There’s a Chinese restaurant ten kilometres away called The Lily Pond.”
Tobias pictured Lennart standing in the bog, talking on the phone. Was he alone, or with someone else? Emily bumping down the track in the blue ambulance with a Chinese takeaway supper, Lennart breaking off the call. And what then?
“So they were here at Roligmose on the 21st September,” said Tobias. “On their own, or with someone else. Astrid Thomsen got an email from Emily on 24th September saying she was going away with Lennart. Did they split up after that, or…?”
“She’d already killed him, and skipped off to join the Eskimos,” said Eddy.
Bogman Page 18
