The Lake

by Lotte Hammer

  As the Countess had predicted, Silje Esper was fully co-operative. She didn’t mind her home being searched as long as the officers tidied up afterwards. That was a stroke of luck because Simonsen didn’t have a warrant, nor in all likelihood would he have been able to get one. He promised that all of his staff would take care when carrying out the search, and on the Countess’s instructions the officers were divided into pairs to comb the various rooms. Mads the dog helped the Countess keep the guests in check. He shuttled from room to room, checking everything was as it should be before continuing his inspection. The pack were scattered, but not under threat.

  Konrad Simonsen and Silje Esper went outside to where the dog run was bounded by a two-metre high fence, recently painted red, apart from three to four metres where the old, peeling and grimy white paint still remained. The fence provided shelter. At the woman’s recommendation, Konrad Simonsen opened his umbrella against the spitting rain, and they sat down on a couple of garden chairs next to a small table. He took out his Dictaphone and pressed Record.

  Silje Esper’s hearing was bat-like:

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Konrad Simonsen explained.

  ‘You could have told me in advance.’

  He apologised, she acknowledged this, and the interview began.

  It was a long conversation, lasting almost two hours, but the result most certainly didn’t match the effort invested. Konrad Simonsen learned very little actual information.

  ‘You own a car, why?’

  ‘Mostly for Philip’s sake. But also for use at the weekends – we often drive to concerts, sometimes in Jutland, or on Funen.’

  Fifteen minutes later.

  ‘Does your boyfriend have friends, acquaintances or family that you know of?’

  ‘No, not that I am aware of. I think he had a sister, but she has never been here.’

  Nor did the blind woman know very much about her boyfriend’s work.

  ‘You suspect Philip Sander of being involved in criminal activities. Why?’

  ‘He was paid his monthly salary in cash, that suggests something illegal. I don’t know what, possibly smuggling of some sort.’

  ‘Drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, bootleg goods, human trafficking?’

  ‘Not drugs, I’m sure of that. Possibly alcohol. Like I said, he did drink heavily.’

  ‘Does he have any convictions?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I don’t think so.’

  Konrad Simonsen took a break from the interview and when he resumed it, carried on asking for information that might lead to the identity of Philip Sander. But again there was nothing to be gained.

  ‘Does your boyfriend have a Dankort or any kind of debit or credit card?’

  ‘No. He deliberately avoided things like that. For example, he would always use my card to take books out of the library.’

  ‘What about fines or other police contact while he drove your car?’

  ‘Never. He was very careful to make sure something like that never happened. We have Brobizz transponders to pay for crossing the Storebælt and Øresund bridges, but they’re both in my name.’

  ‘You think that your boyfriend is dead. Why do you think that?’

  ‘Because he hasn’t come home, of course. And then it’s a feeling I have. Besides, he lived a hard life, as I told you earlier.’

  Silje Esper smiled apologetically, aware she wasn’t being much help. Konrad Simonsen shook his head in frustration and tried again.

  ‘Can you think of anywhere we might find a picture of him? Doesn’t matter if it’s new or old.’

  ‘Definitely not, that was precisely one of the things he tried to avoid at all costs.’

  By this point Konrad Simonsen’s hopes of discovering anything of significance had plummeted considerably. He decided to change tack and take an interest in the woman rather than her boyfriend.

  ‘Tell me about yourself. How do you manage on a day-to-day basis? Do you have help?’

  ‘As little as possible, but the cleaner turns up Mondays and Thursdays, and meals are delivered by the council, ready for the microwave. They taste fine, by the way. I do my shopping by phone, and then it’s delivered to my home. Of course, there are some problems, especially now that Philip is . . . gone. Would you like to hear about them?’

  Konrad Simonsen shook his head, but checked himself.

  ‘No, but please tell me about your personal finances. You have expensive things in your home. For example, I noticed a B&O television.’

  She smiled at him.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. The television was mostly for Philip’s sake, although I like listening to it from time to time, I enjoy current affairs. But my personal finances are in great shape, I have quite a lot of money in the bank. Not too much money, just enough.’

  ‘Are you prepared to tell me how much?’

  ‘More than four and a half million kroner, as well as some investments and shareholdings, but I don’t know precisely how much they’re worth.’

  ‘That’s a hefty sum.’

  He didn’t need to ask the question. She smiled again, modestly this time, and explained: she was a potter and had been one of the best-selling ones in Denmark for many years. She corrected herself: not just one of the best-selling, but the best-selling. She had specialised in studio pottery, which she had primarily sold to two buyers in Germany. A year ago she had stopped production and was now working only for the fun of it. But if he wanted to, he could go upstairs and visit her studio on the first floor.

  ‘Today I mostly make mythical beasts as ornaments for gardens, and there’s no money in that, but it doesn’t matter as long as I enjoy making them. And I do. It’s much more fun than making the same pot over and over again. Now it’s more of a hobby than a job. I should have done it years ago.’

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  She paused before she replied.

  ‘I think I was too greedy. When I finally started making money out of my pots, and believe me, there were many years when I didn’t, well, somehow I couldn’t get enough. It turned into a small industry, but that’s not the point of pottery. It’s a craft, it may even be an art, but it’s definitely not an industry.’

  The Countess opened the terrace door. It had been left ajar and was well oiled, yet Silje Esper immediately turned her head in that direction. The blind woman’s hearing was particularly well developed. The Countess shook her head at Konrad Simonsen. They hadn’t found anything that could lead them to Philip Sander’s true identity. Simonsen threw up his hands in regret and asked Silje Esper his last few questions.

  ‘Do you have children?’

  ‘A daughter in Caen in northern France, I tend to visit her twice a year. Apart from that I have no other family. My father died a few years ago, he was a retired accountant. My mother has been dead for many years.’

  ‘Have you always been blind?’

  ‘No, I haven’t. In 1996 I was in a car accident. It was near Næstved, and it wasn’t my fault. To begin with I was bitter; it was a difficult time. But today I regard my blindness as a gift. If the accident hadn’t happened, I would never have realised what hides inside the clay. It’s hard to make others understand, but that’s how it is. It’s a gift.’

  In the car going back to Copenhagen, Konrad Simonsen asked the Countess:

  ‘What about fingerprints, didn’t we find any of them either?’

  ‘Yes, plenty of prints, but no identity papers.’

  ‘Then we have to hope he’s on our register. Otherwise we’re none the wiser.’

  She made no reply, none was needed. Instead she ventured:

  ‘I just don’t believe that she could have lived with a man for seven years without him at some point or other accidentally letting slip who he is or what he does for a living. Maybe not directly, but a tiny clue, possibly more, which can lead to . . .’ She let the sentence hang in the air, but then added shortly afterwards: ‘I just don’t believe there was nothing.’

  �
�That’s how they would appear to have agreed to live.’

  ‘Yes, they did. But no, it’s not possible. If those prints don’t produce a result, I’ll go back and spend some time with her. After all, she’s happy to co-operate. And I have another idea.’

  She told him that she had seen busts of several different people in the blind woman’s studio, and they were good likenesses. She corrected herself.

  ‘I mean, they were lifelike. Seemed a true representation, if I can put it like that. I can’t tell if the likenesses were any good, of course.’

  ‘You want her to sculpt Philip Sander?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  She explained: they could have Sander’s face drawn or photographed and then show it to the commuters on trains departing from Roskilde Station around nine o’clock in the morning, the time he usually caught his train to work. Many commuters travelled at regular times, so it was likely that someone would recognise the man and know where he was going, or even what his name was.

  When Konrad Simonsen looked sceptical, she added:

  ‘If nothing else, it’s far cheaper than tracking down all relatives of men in their fifties who have died in recent months. Because that really would send our budget into free fall.’

  They drove on for a while. He wasn’t convinced of the validity of her financial argument. And yet he decided to back it.

  CHAPTER 53

  The Countess spent three days with the blind potter and her dog. The two women got on well, and they covered many topics in their conversations, which the Countess, very deliberately, tried not to limit to matters pertaining only to Philip Sander. It meant that information about the man was gathered slowly, but gathered it was. For example, he had definitely been an alcoholic, obese and suffering from severe respiratory problems, for which he took medication. Several different types, every morning after coffee. He also used an inhaler; it was possible that he suffered from emphysema. The next day the Countess asked:

  ‘Symbicort or Spiriva? Those are the capsules you inhale.’

  Silje Esper shook her head, she didn’t know.

  ‘Amlodipine, Corodil – those are the most common drugs to reduce high blood pressure.’

  ‘I don’t know; those names are impossible to remember, though I think he actually did tell me. But some of the pills were pink, so he told me. And others were black. If that’s any help.’

  It wasn’t much help, of course. And the same applied to Silje’s story of how she had originally met her boyfriend. Nevertheless, the Countess listened with interest.

  They had both been queueing inside Nordea Bank in Roskilde when she had dropped her Dankort debit card, which she had been holding in her hand. Philip Sander had picked it up in order to be helpful, but the dog she’d had at the time had bitten him. Silje laughed.

  ‘That dog was crazy, it really was, and in the end it had to be put down. However, it was just as well that it did attack on this occasion or I would never have met Philip.’

  The Countess made a note that Philip Sander might possibly have an account with Nordea Bank in Roskilde. Then she glanced at the dog, which was sleeping at her feet.

  ‘That sounds serious, not to say dangerous.’

  ‘Oh, no. My old dog was an Alsatian. Of course it was painful, Philip needed four stitches. But it was nothing compared to being attacked by Mads.’

  Yet again the Countess marvelled at the woman’s ability to sense what she was thinking, where she was looking and when. It was astonishing. She scratched Mads behind the ear. Truly astonishing.

  Silje Esper embraced the idea of a bust of her boyfriend, and worked on it for more than five hours in her studio before she was satisfied. The Countess followed the creation, which was a fascinating process. In thirty minutes Silje Esper had shaped a face that seemed exceedingly lifelike, although she herself was far from pleased with it. She spent the following four hours on minor alterations that individually were barely noticeable, but together, as the time passed, made the clay face more and more convincing. There was something touching about the blind woman sitting at her work table, with her sightless eyes aimed at the ceiling, remembering her missing boyfriend, then tweaking his cheek, his neck, the root of his nose, with her clay-covered fingers . . . everywhere, everything to perfection.

  Meanwhile, the Countess made herself useful. She now moved around the woman’s house with familiar ease: she prepared lunch in the kitchen downstairs for both of them, fetched fresh water for the clay or fed Mads from the sack of biscuits behind the door in the utility room. Finally Silje Esper said:

  ‘I’m done.’

  The Countess praised the result and called a photographer.

  ‘I haven’t shown you what he looks like to me, or he would have been completely different.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That this task has been about craft, not art. Art isn’t a recreation of reality, it’s an interpretation of it.’

  ‘How would you have made him, if you had interpreted him?’

  She explained with her hands, as if holding up a scoop of sand and letting it trickle out between her fingers.

  ‘More striving, like the way Chopin achieves brilliance for piano when the right hand plays only on the black keys. But Philip makes me sad, even though the clay wants something optimistic, something life-affirming. I miss him too much, I wouldn’t be able to sculpt him properly, not yet.’

  It was the first time that the Countess had heard her say that she missed her boyfriend. Silje Esper laughed, as usual aware of what the other woman was thinking.

  ‘Yes, that’s the way it is, but enough of that. Don’t you think the two of us deserve a beer now? Or would you rather have some fresh coffee?’

  It was rare for the Countess to drink beer twice in one week. Not because she objected to it, but because she preferred wine, and besides, she rarely drank.

  The evening was light and mild. The few men from the village had gathered at the bench by the pond with a beer or two, to rehash today’s events. It was a tradition in Karlslille in the summer months and a good tradition, if you asked the men – it was always time for a beer, and there was plenty to talk about. There was Skipper Thorkil’s son, the lad had inherited his father’s trawler and, imagine, had caught a WW2 mine in his nets last week. That old junk just kept turning up. The men nodded their agreement, although none of them had ever set foot on a fishing boat, let alone worked with nets. But it was a good story, as was the next one . . . and the one after that. The Countess had to listen and react, laugh in the right places, look serious when it was the time for that. Her presence was received kindly, but she was firmly ignored. It was the men’s way of showing her that she mustn’t think people in Karlslille were impressed just because she was a Homicide investigator from Copenhagen.

  There was rumbling in the distance. A bluish flash lit up the forest to the west, while the sky grew ominously dark, although the sun still illuminated the farms on the horizon and gave their contours a reddish, almost golden glow. The Countess cleared her throat during a lull in the conversation. She had done that earlier to no avail, but now she took another step into the circle of men, insistent, bordering on rude. The alternative was a good soaking. Her car was parked outside Silje Esper’s house on the outskirts of the village, and the thunderstorm was fast approaching. The men fell silent. After all, they were intrigued, and they didn’t want to finish their chat in the rain either.

  Silje Esper worked the clay. She had a professional turntable with a wireless foot pedal and adjustable speeds of rotation, but it was hidden away in a corner in favour of an old-fashioned clay turntable, where her feet had to do the work with the treadle at the bottom. She was starting to shape the pot and her face was focused, as though she were listening to the clay. Admirable when you remembered she had made thousands of those pots and it had long since become routine. Nevertheless, she gave the process her full attention.

  The Countess had w
alked around to the back of the house and entered through the French doors. The blind woman had suggested it: no need to ring the bell, not now she knew her way around. Mads got up when she entered the studio. His guest patted him, whereupon he returned to his corner and settled down, soothed by the monotonous sound of the spinning turntable. It was morning, and the Countess’s sixth visit to Karlslille. Silje Esper greeted her.

  ‘What terrible weather we had last night, did you get home all right?’

  The Countess confirmed that she had, although she had had to pull over on the roadside for a few minutes, when the storm was at its worst. Without asking she helped herself to a cup of coffee from the Thermos flask on the table at the back of the room, and sat down on a chair. She kept her handbag on her lap.

  ‘Are you working on my pot?’

  ‘I am. It’ll be ready the day after tomorrow, then you can take it home.’

  ‘Is it the same kind you sold to Germany?’

  ‘It’s slightly smaller, but otherwise yes.’

  ‘Remind me again how much you used to get for them?’

  ‘Towards the end almost four thousand Euro each.’

  ‘That’s a lot of money.’

  ‘They were sold as art in expensive shops all across northern Germany and in the Netherlands and Belgium.’

  ‘Wow, that’s incredible. And indeed it is a lie: you’ve added a zero. At least.’

  Silje Esper let go of the clay and stopped moving her legs, the turntable slowed down before grinding to a halt. The blind woman turned to her guest with a face the Countess had never seen before. A hard, hateful expression had replaced the usual benign air. Silje snapped a short, incomprehensible order to her dog. Mads sprang up as if he had been given an electric shock and stood with his ears back and every muscle tensed. He focused on the Countess and growled, awaiting his next order. Silje Esper hissed: