by Inger Wolf
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SONGBIRD is translated from Danish after Sangfuglen by Mark Kline [email protected].
Copyright © Inger Wolf, 2018
Copyright this edition © People’sPress, Copenhagen 2018
Cover: Juan Padron,
https://juanjjpadron.wixsite.com/juanpadron
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
ISBN-13: 978-87-7180-901-5
People'sPress
Vester Farimagsgade 41, 1606 København V
For Sille
Wednesday, May 6
Chapter One
Anja rose from the kitchen table and turned up the volume on the television. The helicopter hovering over the mid-city park was filming a roadblock and an army of police vehicles, as well as the large crowd gathering close by. Her eyes were glued to the screen as the morning news anchor described to the whole country the gruesome sight Århus had woken to. It was still unclear what had happened, but according to a witness, the body looked mangled. Then the victim’s name rolled past on the bottom of the screen, and she froze. Her hand shook, her coffee sloshed; for a moment, she relived the terror, all the empty animal eyes staring at her, the cloying smell of the headless horse. But only for a moment. Her rage swept the memory away.
Lieutenant Detective Daniel Trokic walked across the dewy grass of City Hall Park. Strange place, he thought. A century ago, he’d have been making his way through a graveyard, Southern Cemetery. Now, people on their way to work passed through without a thought of the hundreds of souls once buried there; most didn’t even know about the cemetery. Beneath the tangled ivy clinging to the gravestones preserved in the park, the police had found the body of a young woman. From a distance, he saw her lying in front of a sand-colored headstone splotched by algae, its inscription eroded away. It looked like her limbs had been broken in several places, and her head rested on the ground at an unnatural angle.
Despite the early hour, Trokic dried the sweat off his brow and opened his fleece jacket. He turned to his colleague, Detective Jasper Taurup, who stood by the barrier tape.
“So, the cousin and his partner were the first responding officers?”
Taurup nodded. “Yeah, unfortunately he was on duty, and I was called in right after. Of course, the guy flipped out when he saw it was his cousin. It shook me up too; she’s in really bad shape.”
Trokic clapped his shoulder. The techs were taking photographs from every angle and measuring off the area. They looked fresh as a daisy, surprisingly so. Whereas he’d had to take an Arctic-cold shower to be even borderline awake. He crossed the last stretch of grass and joined them.
As Taurup had said, the body of the woman in her early twenties looked horrifying. Besides her broken neck, she’d suffered several serious wounds to her skull, and both legs and one arm were broken. Her nose had been flattened. The extent of the wounds, together with her blue fingers and broken nails, gave her a demonic look. She’d been wearing a light green, flowered dress, a short leather jacket, a few pieces of gold jewelry, and ballet flats, though the right shoe was missing.
He didn’t like the park, not at all, and he rarely went there. For him, it was merely a shortcut and a small breathing space in the middle of the city. The thought of the old cemetery made him shudder. It had been one of the city’s largest graveyards from the early 1800s until well into the twentieth century. Back then, it had been just outside the center of the city, but now the pedestrian traffic was heavy.
A few minutes later, the chief forensic tech turned to Trokic, his face flushed and a bit sweaty. “Hey, Daniel. That was quick. Good to see you can still drag yourself out of the suburbs.”
Trokic ignored the chatter. “How far along are you?”
“She wasn’t killed here; that much we know,” Tønnies said. “You can see where she was dragged over the grass, and we’ve also found a tire track over at the edge of the park. The ground is a bit soft there, not much grass either. Perfect. We’ll take a cast before too long. We’re also sure she was dumped here under cover of darkness, even though that meant taking a big risk.”
“So, she was meant to be found quickly.” He knelt down beside her and studied her battered face. A young woman who could have been on her way to school or work now, he thought. Her eyes were two empty ponds, separated by what must have been a broad nose. A brown birthmark stood out on her right cheek, as if it had been carefully drawn. Her hair was the color of an old oak table, and it was sticky from partially-dried blood. She’d been dead for a while; an army of flies was buzzing around, ready to do their part. It was the beginning of May.
Trokic retreated a few steps and silently watched the two men do their jobs. Thick black clouds had moved in; only a few shards of sunlight slipped through. The city was on the cusp of its daily rebirth; swarms of sparrows began chirping monotonously, and the smell of the park’s wet earth and grass clashed with exhaust fumes from cars and the ventilation system from a nearby Burger King. The morning’s first diesel buses were starting up on the other side of the park, where traffic on the bicycle path was getting heavy. Another busy day in the city.
“There’s a lot of dirt and muck on her dress. Is it from here?”
The tech shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’ll take samples later; hopefully, we can locate the crime scene.”
“What’s the story on her hands and arms?” Trokic asked.
They eyed her long, thin hands. Her nails were mangled and broken, and it looked like several fingers had been cut.
“She might’ve put up a fight or scratched at something. The cuts on her arms, that’s the pathologist’s call. Where’s Agersund? Shouldn’t he be here?”
Lately, Trokic’s boss hadn’t been able to shake a bad spring cold. Normally, he’d be running around, cussing like a sailor. Must be really bad, Trokic thought, if a suspicious death couldn’t roust him out of his sickbed.
“So, you’re the man today,” Tønnies said good-naturedly without taking his eyes off the young woman. “I guess we’ll get by okay.”
A few moments later, Torben Bach, the forensic pathologist, approached them.
“Morning. Looks like you two don’t have much time.” He knelt down by the body.
“What do you mean?” Trokic asked.
He looked up at the dark sky. “I’d say you have a half hour before the rains come and wash away all your evidence. We’re lucky she’s not already soaked to the skin.”
Trokic and Tønnies moved back a step to give the department’s senior pathologist room. His hands moved swiftly and surely over the body to coax out the final chapter of the young woman’s life.
Several moments later, he looked up at Trokic, his face grave. “She’s fallen from a significant height.” He pointed at her maimed legs. “Notice the way her feet are broken. That’s what we see in suicides when they jump. Or when someone gets pushed.”
“How high?”
“That I can�
�t tell you, not yet.”
Bach glanced over at the City Hall tower. “Not from there; she’s too far away. I’ll have to check her internal injuries. You’ll just have to be patient until I get her on the table.”
Tønnies shooed at some flies. They ignored him. “Maybe you can give us a time frame on time of death?”
Bach frowned. “Since we don’t know if she was inside or outside before she ended up here; it’s hard to pinpoint. It makes a difference if she was warm indoors or out here in the cold last night. Body temperature isn’t going to tell me much.”
Carefully, he lifted her leg. “Livor mortis looks diffuse, but it’s fixed anyway. I’ll have a better idea of how she’s been lying when we bring her in and get her clothes off. Minimal rigor mortis. I would say between eight yesterday evening and midnight. That’s as close as I can narrow it down right now.”
Trokic glanced at her again. Her skin was showing signs of discoloration, and her bloody hair was stiffening. “What about all the cuts on her arms?”
“My first impression is that they’re self-inflicted. Parallel, mostly on one arm. Some of them aren’t new. The rest is up to you to find out. Have we identified her?”
Trokic nodded. “Unfortunately, her cousin was one of the first officers on the scene. Really unlucky he had to see her this way.”
“So, maybe he’s the one who threw up over by the tree?”
Trokic nodded again. “Yeah. Anyway, we know her name is Maja Nielsen, twenty-one years old, she lived by herself on Montanagade. I’ll go in and talk to the officer later, after I have a look at her apartment. He’s shaken up, of course. What about the autopsy?”
The pathologist pulled his mask down and scratched his beard. Grayer than the last time Trokic had seen it. He’d be retiring soon, to Trokic’s dismay. One of his possible successors was a straight-laced young man with a body like a bowling pin, who had little respect for the theories police came up with. It wasn’t going to be fun.
“Soon as possible,” Bach said. “I’ve already called a few of my people in; they’re waiting. I’ll call when I’m ready for you.”
He paused. “Once in a while, somebody from out in the suburbs brings us bones, people digging a basement, that sort of thing. Skeletons show up; they’re from the old cemetery here. When it was taken out, the newer graves were sent to other graveyards, but the old forgotten ones were dumped in fields outside the city. Which, of course, grew. So, once in a while, these old ghosts literally rise up from underneath people’s feet.”
Trokic left his colleagues and walked over the wet grass, back to his car. The much-too-large crowd looked like a bunch of prairie dogs, standing on their hind legs, gazing out over the park. One woman, fifty-ish, green scarf, leather purse, was talking to a friend while eagerly following the proceedings. The sleepy city was awake now, with a front row seat to the entertainment, that much he had to admit. As far as he knew, nothing this spectacular had ever happened here in the heart of town. Trokic shook his head as he fished his phone out of his pocket and called the dispatcher.
“We need more bodies here at the park; we haven’t secured the area, plus we need room to maneuver. This isn’t a damn zoo here.”
He got into his Honda Civic and put it in reverse. After a horrible fall, she’d been moved to the most conspicuous spot in the entire city. Who would run such a risk? It made no sense.
Someone knocked on his side window, and he rolled it down.
“Lieutenant Detective Trokic?” asked a young officer.
“Yes.”
“I’m supposed to tell you we have the key to her apartment. A few officers are over on Montanagade to seal it off. They’ll give you the key.”
“Okay, good.”
The young officer’s lower lip quivered ever so slightly. “They say there’s blood all over.”
Chapter Two
Trokic parked his car on Montanagade and looked around at the early morning street. A few bicyclists raced by, their faces blank; fifty meters away, two men were dragging kitchen cabinets out of a white delivery truck. The colorful street with the numerous small houses standing shoulder to shoulder had been recently renovated, making it even more attractive, and the surrounding area was on the upswing. The shops and restaurants of the city center were nearby, but here peace and quiet reigned.
He found the entrance to the courtyard of Maja Nielsen’s building and walked in. The first warning drops of rain began falling. The place looked dismal, dingy. Two officers were setting out barrier tape between the buildings and the many bicycles scattered around. The building’s maintenance man had given them Maja’s keys, and they handed them to Trokic.
He gazed up to judge the distance to the third floor. Could she have jumped off or have been pushed and then moved? He visualized the scenario. A fall, a moment’s weightlessness, the body smacking into the cold, uneven cobblestones. It didn’t feel right. All the third-floor windows were closed, and it didn’t seem high enough to cause the terrible injuries she’d sustained.
A wall of cool, clammy air met him when he opened the door to the cramped apartment. It was dark inside despite the hour, and he fumbled around to find the light switch. The narrow hallway had wooden floors. A glass vase filled with wilted flowers stood on a small bureau, a poster from an AroS art exhibit was tacked to the wall, coats hung from a hook.
The Venetian blinds in the dim living room were closed. At first glance, the place looked ordinary. Plaster ceiling, stripped furniture, bookshelves, knickknacks. But when his eyes finally adjusted to the light, he froze. Several square meters of one wall was covered with dried blood. Almost black, not red, and several places in more than one layer. Other places, the blood seemed to have been flung. There were no patterns, no symbols or drawings; it was as if she’d sat at one end of the sofa and sloshed blood onto the wall in a fit of total insanity. One end of the sofa had also been splattered, and several of the vaguely green pillows were stained.
He glanced at the other end of the room, and his stomach fell even further at the sight of small scraps of paper covering a small dining table. He walked over. Each message reported a time and place in chronological order, in feminine handwriting: “23/4, 11:45 kitchen,” “23/4, 14:22 shower,” “23/4, 22:40 telephone.” There were hundreds of them, written with various pens, and several places the scraps were riddled with holes. Apparently, she’d recorded what she’d been doing, when she’d been doing it. For some reason, time had been important.
A small key was taped down close to one edge of the table. He stared for a moment, tempted to pick it up and inspect it, but that was the techs’ job.
He turned to the room and tried to imagine what lay behind the lunacy. Two cups with mint tea bags stood on the table. The far wall had been papered, a beautiful green flower design; a shelf revealed a number of CDs, including Ella Fitzgerald, Jerry Lewis, Billie Holiday, and Anita Ekberg; two newspapers and a stack of sheets of music lay on the floor. Books filled another shelf: cookbooks, histories of rock and jazz, biographies of musicians and actors, three books about dream interpretation, a book about animals in sagas, an encyclopedia of psychology, and more sheet music. A musical girl who was curious about the world, he concluded.
Out in the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator. A liter of organic milk, a stick of butter, two tomatoes, and liver paté with spots of mold stared back at him. Toward the back, he noticed nail polish and a dead homemade face mask, whose major components possibly had been cucumber and avocado. He closed the refrigerator, nudged a dried rag on the kitchen counter, and walked into the bathroom. It was a mess in there too. The counter was covered with small empty boxes. Makeup, creams, files, jewelry, perfume, hairbands, several oral hygiene products. He thought back to the sight in the park, the woman with filthy clothes and tangled hair, and he compared it to everything in front of him; apparently, it had been some time since she’d used any of it.
Back in the living room, he peered out the windows. It was raining harder now; the
panes were covered with drops. The two officers down in the courtyard were talking to a man in a blue hat. The faint sound of electronic music from another apartment seeped through the walls. Trokic studied the windows, all of them tiny and hinged from the inside. Everything pointed to her dying somewhere else. The possibilities were nearly endless, with all the tall buildings around.
There was nothing more he could do there. Time to hand the apartment over to the techs. They would fine-comb the place and take all the things of possible interest that Trokic was keeping his hands off. Samples of blood, fingerprints, the small white scraps of paper and post-its and all her personal documents, her computer, everything that might be important. They would sweep in, a small mobile unit that processed physical material to produce information that would aid the investigation. Other colleagues would question neighbors and attempt to account for her movements before her death.
He shuddered as he took a final glance at the room. The woman had lived in terror, and he had a hunch that’s what ended up killing her. It was time to visit Maja’s parents and see what role they’d played in all this.
Chapter Three
Maja Nielsen’s parents lived in a large white house in Sabro, a suburb of Århus. Standing at the door, Trokic sensed the chilly atmosphere, and he and Taurup walking in seemed to violate the parents’ private space.
They were shown into a large, light room with high ceilings and white walls, designer furniture several years old. A large bouquet of narcissus stood on a glass table. The house was lacking for nothing, but it was too white. Sterile, like a well-decorated operation room. Someone had mentioned that they’d owned a cannery.
Trokic and Taurup sat down on a small, beige leather sofa and brought out their notebooks. Neither of them was very good with people who were experiencing the worst moments of their lives, but this was one of the first and most important tasks in a potential murder investigation.
