The Lake
Page 13
It was in Paris in May 1943. Victoria and Émilie were wanted by the Germans, and had been betrayed. Suddenly Saint-Augustin, the Metro station where they had just got off, was teeming with Gestapo officers. The women split up and Victoria headed towards the Boulevard Haussmann exit. On her way up the steps, she had grabbed her pistol, wrapped her scarf around it to conceal it and tied the ends around her neck as if her right arm were injured and had to be supported in a sling.
The exit at street level was guarded by two German soldiers armed with pistols. They made sure that no one came up or went down. Below her, on the platform, the Gestapo was systematically checking everyone, which at some point would include her, which would mean the end. The Germans keeping guard at street level were from the regular occupying forces, young people like her, sons of peasants from Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, now stationed in the French capital. She started chatting to them in her respectable German, asked where they were from, learned about their families, had charmed them, taken her time, laughed with them. Then she had clumsily fished out her lipstick and a compact mirror from her handbag. One German soldier had gallantly offered to hold the mirror, while she touched up her lips, bright red, as was the fashion at the time. She adjusted the mirror, once, several times, laughing until they found the right angle. Meanwhile, the other soldier held her handbag. Then she shot both of them, picked up her bag and left. Adam Blixen-Agerskjold added:
‘She once told me how one second she was looking at her own reflection in the mirror, and the next she was staring right at the face of a young man who had been shot through the eye. She was twenty years old at the time.’
The Countess asked quietly:
‘I bought a copy of Femmes en guerre from an antiquarian bookseller. Do you think she might sign it? Is she able to?’
The Chamberlain never had time to reply because suddenly the old lady burst out:
‘That estate bailiff claimed he had been in Norway, but they don’t have the Euro in Norway, he was lying . . . he was! I want you to know that, Detective Superintendent, he killed the nignog, the bastard.’
The words were spoken clearly, though the old woman’s eyes were closed. But when Konrad Simonsen asked about her allegation, she didn’t reply. Instead she snarled irritably:
‘Il a tué le nignog, le salaud!’
Konrad Simonsen looked at Adam Blixen-Agerskjold, who shrugged this off, it meant nothing to him. But it clearly did to his wife.
‘Bloody hell, Victoria is right, he is lying.’
Everyone’s jaw dropped, the Chamberlain’s because he hadn’t heard his wife swear for years.
They borrowed the care home manager’s office where they had to wait for Lenette Blixen-Agerskjold, who went looking for something. When she finally returned, she held a box in her hand. It was transparent and rectangular, about a finger-width tall and about as long as a hand. It contained five miniature bottles of perfume, each shaped as one of Salvador Dalí’s surreal figures. She apologised to them.
‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting. It’s Mrs Jørgensen, she loves those little bottles, and steals them from Victoria whenever she gets a chance. Normally she doesn’t mind giving them back, but her daughter was visiting, and . . . Well, it took a little longer. Now, listen.’
She told them that the estate had employed a kitchen assistant a couple of years ago. Frode Otto had flirted with her regularly, but she showed little interest in him. After a holiday, a ten-day hiking trip to Guldbrandsdalen in Norway, he claimed to have bought the perfumes for her as a gift. However, she didn’t like them, or she didn’t like him, so she passed on the present to Victoria Blixen-Agerskjold, who at that point was still living at the manor. Lenette Blixen-Agerskjold said:
‘Now there could be many explanations for it, but I remember Frode talking about his holiday in detail when he came back, and I was surprised because normally he never does.’
The expression on her husband’s face confirmed this. His bombastic declaration to Konrad Simonsen in Hanehoved Forest about getting Frode Otto the best defence lawyer money could buy would appear to have been forgotten.
The Countess picked up the box with the perfume bottles. It was unopened, still with the original plastic wrapping on. It would appear to be the beautifully coloured bottles, rather than the contents, which attracted Mrs Jørgensen. The price sticker stating €25 was intact. It had been stuck on top of another label. She carefully eased off the price tag with a fingernail, and a logo appeared. Tallink Silja Line, it said.
‘When was he away?’
Lenette Blixen-Agerskjold replied without hesitation.
‘Two thousand and seven, the last two weeks of June.’
The Countess punched the air.
‘Yes!’
CHAPTER 29
Henrik Krag had mixed feelings as he turned his motorbike into the car park in front of Jægersborg Library in Gentofte. Benedikte Lerche-Larsen had ordered him to meet her there that Friday, 24 April, the date stipulated by the anonymous letter writer. He parked near the library, a long two-storey brick building whose many windows bore witness to a time when energy prices were much lower than they were today. He removed his crash helmet and scratched his scalp vigorously, before he unzipped his biker jacket halfway to cool down. He was sweating.
Benedikte Lerche-Larsen was already there when he stepped through the automatic sliding doors to the library. She was reading a poster on a noticeboard to the right of the entrance, but turned her head when she heard the doors open. She was wearing a honey- coloured trench coat, tight jeans and boots.
‘Did you come here on your bike?’
He nodded. She glanced quickly at her watch.
‘Show it to me.’
They left together, and she studied it for some time.
‘It’s a Harley-Davidson?’
The question was superfluous as the brand name was clearly stated on the tank.
‘A Sportster Forty-eight, twelve hundred cc.’
‘It’s nice.’
He thanked her and felt foolish.
Benedikte Lerche-Larsen walked up to the counter with Henrik Krag in tow. A librarian in his thirties was reading a magazine. He glanced up vacantly, then handed her a key, which he had already placed in front of him on his desk. She led them through the library, then down a short flight of stairs and unlocked a door at the foot of them.
The room they entered was almost empty. In the middle stood a table with a computer connected to a machine Henrik Krag didn’t recognise. In front of the keyboard were three small cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other, as if whoever had put them there had wanted to make sure they would not be overlooked. Two rickety chairs with peeling, laminated teak backs had been pushed under the table.
Henrik Krag watched Benedikte Lerche-Larsen as she took out her MacBook from her bag, turned it on and clicked on a couple of programs he had never seen before connecting her mobile to the laptop. When she was done, she checked the clock on her mobile.
‘We have twenty minutes. If he calls us on time, that is. Did you bring your mobile like I told you to?’
He had. She pointed to the door at the back of the room.
‘Go outside and call me, so I can test this.’
‘Test what? Please tell me what’s going on first? What’s that?’
He pointed to the machine to the right on the table.
‘And why are we here, and not at my place . . . Or yours?’
‘We’re here because Ishøj isn’t really my kind of place, and that contraption over there is a machine used for viewing microfiche, old-fashioned rolls of film of, say, newspapers. I’ve requested back issues of Jyllands-Posten and Dagbladet from January and February 1955, and you’re welcome to read them when we’re done.’
‘You know I can’t read, there’s no need to mock me. Is this so we can use the room?’
She nodded, and tossed her head imperiously at the door. He stayed put.
‘What are we testing?’
The door led to another basement passage. He half closed it, and rang her. When she picked up, he reeled off the months of the year, he couldn’t think of anything else to say. She interrupted him before he got to July. When he came back, she was busy replacing the SIM card on her mobile.
‘Stop taking the piss out of me the whole time.’
At first she made no reply to this and he thought she hadn’t heard him. Then she mimicked him cruelly:
‘“Stop taking the piss out of me.” Ah, poor you! Then get your shit together and wise up!’
‘And I want to be there when you meet Frode Otto. Otherwise you can sort all this crap out yourself.’
He had blurted it without thinking, as if the words were coming from someone else. She looked up at him with renewed interest then smiled widely, from earring to earring. She placed one hand on his forearm.
‘Well, then, you’d better join me. Now sit down, Henrik.’
He sat, strangely happy to hear her say his name. She went on:
‘You can be really sweet sometimes.’
Their shared laughter was interrupted by Benedikte Lerche-Larsen’s hoarse voice, sexy and ill-suited to the occasion, saying: ding dong, ding dong, the ringtone she had recorded on her mobile.
She spoke her name and they heard keystrokes before a synthetic female voice could be heard coming from the computer’s speakers:
‘State your name again, your first name and your surname.’
She obeyed and again she heard keystrokes, then the voice came back:
‘Why is there an echo?’
‘There are two of us on speakerphone.’
The keystrokes were hit faster, and the volume of the voice was turned up:
‘Just you! Will call again in two minutes. Just you!’
The call was ended.
She swore, then pulled the cable from her mobile. Henrik Krag said optimistically:
‘Doesn’t matter, you can always tell me what happened afterwards.’
‘I can still record it, that’s not the problem. But now he knows you’re here and he’s bound to ask me about you. However, that can’t be helped.’
Henrik Krag couldn’t really see that much harm had been done; he mumbled something about the two of them already being in it up to their necks. She didn’t answer him, but moved to the far end of the room where he couldn’t hear anything. Shortly afterwards, she began talking. He studied her in detail after which he concluded realistically that a guy like him would never get a girl like her. Strangely this conclusion didn’t hurt; on the contrary, it only spurred him on.
When she returned, she was pale and didn’t say anything. She reconnected her mobile with a cable, activated a program on the computer, after which sound poured out of the speakers:
‘Are you alone now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Jægersborg Library, a basement room I’ve borrowed.’
‘State the name, address and age of the person who was listening in before.’
‘Henrik Krag, twenty-four years, I don’t have the address.’
‘That was lie number one, there won’t be a second one unless you want the police waiting for you when you get home.’
‘Number four three one, Ishøj Fælledvej.’
‘Is he the man you killed the Nigerian girl with?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your email address.’
‘lerchelarsen@gmail.com, lerchelarsen no hyphen.’
‘You will donate a hundred thousand kroner to the CNN Freedom Project. For your information, the project works to fight sexual slavery. You will make the payment on Tuesday, I will email you the details.’
‘We don’t have a hundred thousand kroner.’
‘Watch it!’
‘Give us until Friday. We need more time.’
‘Friday is fine. Secondly, you will each be given two tasks, which you must – repeat must – execute. They are your just punishment.’
‘What tasks?’
‘You will be told later.’
‘Why do we have to do them?’
‘Because you deserve it.’
With every sentence they heard keystrokes, and when the voice said watch it, the sound was turned up so much that the words distorted and became hard to make out. Benedikte Lerche-Larsen had sat down on a chair, apparently drained of energy, but after the second playing she got up and started pacing round in aimless circles. Just punishment . . . she shook her head impotently, vigorously, so her red hair billowed around her, another three paces, then again: Your just punishment.
She stopped by the wall. It was ages since it had last been painted, the paint was peeling, exposing the plaster in several places. She picked out such a spot and kicked the tip of her boot into it to worsen the damage, while she kept repeating the words.
‘Your just punishment – that psycho can force us to do anything now, and there’s fuck all we can do about it.’
‘Perhaps it won’t be that bad, we’ll just have to wait and see how she’s going to punish us.’
‘It’s not a woman. Don’t you get it, it was a man? It was a synthetic voice.’
‘Yes, of course I do, but it was just because it was Ida, and then . . . then . . . It doesn’t matter.’
She looked at him, baffled.
‘No, go on, tell me. Who is Ida?’
‘There’s Ida and Carsten and Per. There is also Mette, but she was too expensive . . . way too expensive for my school. And then there’s Emily and Mary in English.’
The silence that ensued oppressed him, and it was almost a relief when she asked:
‘Tell me, have you had a stroke or something?’
He explained that the special educational needs co-ordinator at his school had lent him a laptop and what was known as a scanner pen, which he used to trace over a text, whereupon a computerised voice would read the text aloud to him. The different voices had names, and Ida was one of them.
‘She was my favourite. And she was the one we used the most.’
Benedikte nodded without commenting and pointed to the back door.
‘Please would you get us a couple of beers from the shop across the road? Do you have any money?’
He did, he left and she started packing up.
They sat outside on the steps to the basement. Henrik Krag opened their beers, and Benedikte Lerche-Larsen lit a cigarette.
‘I didn’t think you smoked.’
‘Once in a blue moon.’
She looked at the cigarette, took another drag then flicked it away.
‘I don’t like the sound of those tasks he was threatening us with.’
She took a deep swig of her beer, and he did the same.
‘If it’s too bad, we can always turn ourselves in. Perhaps the judge will realise it was an accident. Sometimes they can be really nice, you know.’
She turned her head and her green eyes flashed.
‘I know that you would fit in just fine with the other inmates. For you it would be one long, free holiday. But I’m not wasting five precious years of my life with a bunch of losers who can’t tell the difference between a bin bag and Louis Vuitton, or lowlife ghetto types whose vocabulary only exceeds a hundred if you count fuck fifteen times. Forget it.’
They sat for a while without speaking, then she said:
‘We have to find out who it is. We must.’
‘But how will you . . . will we do that? And what about the money, can you get it?’
‘I can get half. What are you going to do?’
> ‘I don’t have fifty thousand.’
‘Oh, yes, you do.’
She told him the obvious answer, the thought he hadn’t dared form for himself. He drained his beer, almost in a trance, and another long silence ensued. Then she reached out a hand, pinched his chin gently and turned his head.
It was hard to tell whether it was the damp weather or if he had tears in his eyes.
‘Are you crying about your motorbike?’
He shrugged. There was no other way out, and he knew it. She patted his knee and said pensively:
‘I understand that this is bad for you, but you really should have thought about that before you dropped that nignog on the floor like a sack of potatoes.’
CHAPTER 30
Tallink Silja Line sails between Stockholm and Helsinki. The ferry departs from Sweden in the early evening and docks in Finland the following morning, when it is cleaned, ready to depart the same night in the reverse direction. Two ferries serviced the route.
23 June 2007 was a Saturday, and the weather in Stockholm was pleasant, warm and calm when early that afternoon a group of young people gathered in Ringen, a circular area between the ground and first floors of Stockholm Central Station. They knew one another from the Internet site www.vimusiker.se.
Randi Hansson was nineteen years old and came from Jämtland in central Sweden. Early that morning she had driven to the capital in high spirits, excited because she rarely went out. The youngsters didn’t know one another well, but the mood was high and the beer flowed freely. When they embarked on the ferry, Randi Hansson was already drunk, a state which gradually worsened as the evening progressed, and which culminated in her throwing up in the lavatory strategically placed right outside the onboard club. A female security guard strongly recommended that she went to bed, a piece of advice she followed as she staggered away.
The rape was brutal and sadistic. It took place in her cabin and lasted several hours. Two ribs and four fingers were broken, chunks of her hair torn out, and the remote control from the cabin’s television had been inserted into her anus as a final humiliating gesture by her attacker.