Songbird (Daniel Trokics Series Book 3)

by Inger Wolf

  “So, she was here every day in the afternoon?”

  “Yes, but I have to admit, a few times we also took advantage of her living close by. We called her outside her regular hours to do something or other.”

  He shuffled some papers on his desk as he smiled, almost apologetically. Jasper thought about what Thor had just said. That she lived nearby. Could someone have followed her home? Chased her up somewhere high and pushed her off? That didn’t sound plausible. But there were a number of men there outside the office, and given an unfortunate fact concerning human males, five percent of them presumably were psychopaths.

  “Do you have a list of your employees?” Lisa asked. “We’ll probably need to talk to them all individually.”

  Jasper clenched his teeth. Lists weren’t popular with him, all these people to be interviewed. The leader nodded eagerly and pointed over at a bulletin board.

  “You’re welcome to a copy of our schedule, so you’ll have the names and their work hours. Is that okay?”

  “Super,” Lisa said. “How did she get along with the others working here? Was she friends with any of them outside of work?”

  “No. We had the impression she was very busy with her music, but she did have a beer with Mona a few times, I believe. Mona’s only a few years older. But I don’t believe they were actually friends; they’re a lot different from each other.”

  “Who else comes around here she could have had contact with?”

  “Well, that would be our clients, for the most part. We have beds for twenty people, but once in a while, a few more than that stay the night. It’s hard to shut people out. They sleep on the floor with a blanket. It’s better than out in the cold.”

  He sighed and took a sip of coffee. “There’s more pressure all the time, with the cuts in psychiatry, fewer admissions. Fewer beds for patients. About thirty percent of our clients are emotionally ill. Maybe they don’t meet the criteria for being admitted to a psychiatric hospital. The short and long is, we have problems. A lot of younger clients show up, and we see the numbers increasing all the time.”

  “But is it mostly the same clients that keep coming here?” Jasper wasn’t about to start a discussion on political priorities. He heard plenty of that at police headquarters, and so far, it had solved nothing.

  Jackson tilted his head, as if he were giving the question thought. “Well. Some come and go, but there are a lot of regulars. If I had to put a number on it, I’d say there’s five or ten new faces every week. The rest have been here once or more. Luckily, some we never see again because they find a place to live.”

  “You keep records on who stays here, don’t you?” Jasper said. “We’d like to talk to as many of your clients as possible. Maybe someone knows something, or they’ve seen Maja talking to someone.”

  Jackson looked more businesslike. “No, we don’t keep records, definitely not. This is a free place for people to come. But you’re welcome to talk to anyone here, as long as you do so with respect.”

  “Of course, we will; don’t worry,” Lisa said. “Have you seen her speak to anyone other than employees? I mean, more than what’s normal. We’ve been told that she might have been seeing someone from here, privately, understand.”

  Jackson looked thoughtful again. “No, I don’t think so. Sometimes she would sit down and talk to someone for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. Listen to their story. We encouraged her to do so. It makes our clients feel at home, seeing a familiar face when they come in. But I really don’t think there was anything more than that.”

  “Did she ever look sad or maybe depressed in some way when she was here?” Jasper said.

  “She didn’t until recently. She never spoke all that much. But it’s really hard to say because she was only here for two hours a day, and everyone’s busy, so no, we never really talked very much.”

  “But surely you can sense something like that anyway?”

  “Yes, and I did have the feeling she was a bit down. But not enough to worry me.”

  “How much was she here the last month?”

  “She didn’t come in a lot the last few weeks. She called in sick…let me see…”

  Jackson pulled a thick, white calendar down from the shelf on the wall and flipped through it with nicotine-stained fingers. The calendar was already tattered, and yellow post-it slips stuck out from the sides.

  Jasper was relieved. Calendars, dates. Clear and comprehensible. The finger stopped flipping.

  “She was gone twice in week fifteen, also twice in week sixteen. The last two weeks, seventeen and eighteen, she didn’t come in at all. In fact, we talked about what to do, but we were so happy with her. All we wanted was for her to come back. We talked about getting a substitute because things had started piling up.”

  “So, she wasn’t about to lose her job?”

  “Not about to, no. None of us wanted to fire her. In fact, we sent a bouquet of flowers over to her, but she never called and thanked us for it.”

  “What did she say the reason was for her absence?”

  “Flu-like symptoms. And she was going to the doctor. She’d always been very dependable, so we believed her. By the way, do you know when her funeral is? Several of us want to attend, but we don’t know her parents or others in her family.”

  “There’s no date yet,” Lisa said. “The Forensics Institute has to release her first. But you’re welcome to call me; I’ll find out for you.”

  “Thank you, I will.”

  “We’ll get back to you if we have any more questions.” Lisa stuffed into her bag the list of employees he’d handed to her. “First, we’ll speak to your employees and clients as soon as we can.”

  The center’s leader showed them out. Jasper looked back at Transit’s windows. The man who had looked up at them earlier was staring out the window, a thoughtful look in his eyes. Jasper felt like going back in and grabbing him and asking him if he knew Maja. If he could tell them about her.

  “Text from the boss,” Lisa said, her eyes on the phone. “Briefing.”

  Jasper gave up on going back in; talking to the Transit clients would have to wait. “Really? I thought we were stopping by Deedee for a sandwich.”

  “No time for that,” Lisa said. “I am so terribly hungry, though.”

  “The hell with him; we can’t live on air.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Two portable whiteboards had been rolled into the briefing room. One for Maja Nielsen, the other for Anja Mikkelsen, the animal-rights activist lying in a coma at Skejby Hospital. The boards were covered with sketches of where they’d been found, photos of people close to the victims, timelines, clues.

  Everyone in Department A, two officers on loan from other departments, and the chief forensic pathologist, Tønnies, and two of his aides were present. It was crowded and stuffy in the room, close to Trokic’s limits for how many human beings should be gathered in one place.

  Jasper and Kornelius galloped in, each of them carrying a small bag. They sat down in the front row and looked innocently at Trokic, as if they weren’t the ones who showed up late. Lisa’s longish hair was pulled back in her usual skinny ponytail, and she wore a long green sweater. In the past few years, her self-confidence had grown to where she’d become a charismatic figure in the department. And she seemed happy. Which perhaps more than anything was a result of her boyfriend, Detective Jacob Hviid, transferring to the Århus Police. The decision hadn’t been easy; the past several years Hviid, who was also Trokic’s friend, had been with the MCI, the Mobile Crime Investigation Unit, based in Copenhagen, and he’d loved his job. But they’d had to pick between the two cities, and because house prices in the capital would have forced them to move far out into the suburbs, which meant long commutes daily to and from work, they chose Århus. Living together would also do them good; Lisa was apparently head over heels in love with the blond detective, and the long-distance relationship hadn’t helped her mood.

  Trokic nodded at Simon Møller, who was sitti
ng on the right side of the room, a bit away from the others. He already regretted allowing Møller to attend the briefing. Officers who were personally involved in a case were unpredictable, and that could be critical if he let the details affect him too much.

  Trokic was still thinking about the key Maja had left behind. Two officers had located the deposit box in Nordea, and it was as Møller had said: the box had contained old jewelry. Nothing that in itself could help them, but she’d left the key for her cousin, and that indicated she’d known something would happen to her, that either she was going to take her own life, or someone wanted to take it from her.

  Trokic glanced out over the gathering. They were a bright group of officers, though most of them had been working more or less around the clock. Now that he was stepping in for Agersund, he would have to update them on both cases.

  “First, the most urgent.” He pointed at the whiteboard dealing with Maja Nielsen. “We still regard this case as a suspicious death, and we still haven’t located where she fell. She was last seen by a classmate named Rikke, the morning before she was found in Town Hall Park. Rikke stopped by Maja’s apartment to drop off some music, but she didn’t go inside. She says that Maja seemed a bit unfocused and edgy, but not really confused or spaced out. And that’s the last we know of anyone having contact with her. From then until five-thirty the next morning is a complete blank.”

  He took a deep breath. “Okay. The photos are from her apartment, taken by Forensics. As you can see, it’s a brutal sight.”

  “Psychosis,” said an officer in the back row. “My sister just had one, a serious episode, and she could have done something like that.”

  “At any rate, it looks bizarre,” Trokic said. “Morten and Anne Marie, you’ve spoken with her doctor?”

  Morten Lind checked his notes. “Maja did see her doctor a few weeks before her death; it’s in her medical records too. All he could do was refer her to a psychiatrist, but you all know how long the waiting list is for that. He also gave her the number of the psychiatric emergency room, if it got to that point, but she didn’t use it.”

  Trokic nodded. “Any questions before we go on to the autopsy report?”

  “What about a cell phone?” Anne Marie said. “Did she have one on her?”

  “No, and we didn’t find a phone in the park or in her apartment. But we know she had one. Telia reports that no calls were made from the phone that day. The last signal came from the center of town, and presently it’s turned off or destroyed. Her call records are on the way. Anything else?”

  After a few moments, he passed copies of the autopsy report around. “As you can see, Pathology pinned the cause of death to a fall from a significant height. Several things point to suicide, including the cuts on her arms that most likely were self-inflicted. As you also know, cuts like this aren’t unusual, especially with young women. Together with what we found in the apartment, it’s logical to regard this as a suicide. Just as interesting is the blood sample taken during the autopsy. Something’s wrong. It has to do with an unusually high amount of substances in the blood, but we’re still waiting on that.”

  “Could it be drugs?” Lisa said.

  “There’s a place on Jægergårdsgade, Buller Bar,” Lind said. “One of her classmates said she hung out there once in a while, and it’s not exactly a classy joint.”

  Trokic jotted down a note. “We’ll check that out.”

  Taurup smiled. “But really, there are only three possibilities. Either someone killed her and moved her. Or she killed herself, and someone else moved her. Or someone killed her and someone else moved her.”

  Anne Marie rolled her eyes. “Thanks for simplifying it for us, now we get it. But why would anyone clean up after someone else made the mess?”

  “Her suicide might have compromised someone, or made it uncomfortable for them, and they came up with the wise idea that moving the body would confuse everyone,” Taurup said. “For instance, her boyfriend. Or someone who knows something about the family or a life insurance policy.”

  “Why do you always come up with ideas that have to do with money or something embarrassing?” Anne Marie said.

  “Why do your ideas always have something to do with sex?” Taurup lifted his eyebrows.

  Anne Marie mumbled something about stuffing Taurup in the dumpster and sending him back to Mars where he came from, then she went back to jotting down notes.

  Trokic was annoyed with them, but he let it go. “The family is one of the angles we have to look into. Anne Marie, Morten, follow up on it. Talk to the family again, see if they’re hiding something.”

  “We looked at her financial situation too,” Lind said. “There’s not much going on there. She had quite a bit of money in her account, but there aren’t suspicious transfers or anything. No life insurance either. Boring consumer habits.”

  Anne Marie glanced over at Taurup. “So much for that theory.”

  A young officer they called Folle spoke up. No one could remember his real name. Trokic noticed the red stripe he’d added to his crew cut. “One of her classmates said she was extremely rich.”

  “That’s probably her parents,” Lind said. “And even if she had a lot of money, it would all go to her parents. She had no life insurance policy or will; it wasn’t going to some psychopathic monster.”

  “We’ve also heard a few allegations from people we’ve spoken to,” Trokic said. “The boyfriend, Martin Isaksen, said he suspected she was seeing someone from Transit. We have to keep all of this in mind.”

  He turned to Tønnies. “You have something for us too?”

  The pathologist rose and held up copies of the two tires. Trokic listened to him repeat to the group what he’d told Trokic earlier that day.

  “Did you find any retailers who sell that rare type of tire?” he asked, when Tønnies was finished.

  “Yes, and we made a list of the dealers selling them here in the metropolitan area. I say list—there are only three of them. One in Viby, one here in the center of town, and one in Egå.”

  Trokic nodded. That sounded easy. The mood in the room turned a bit lighter.

  “And you mentioned something about the distance between the wheels, also the width of the tires,” Trokic said. “Any more about that?”

  “It could be a commercial van, or a four-wheel-drive. We’re leaning toward the latter.”

  “Good. And the fibers?”

  “Several different types, but none of them special. It’s not going to move us forward, but of course they can be used when we have a suspect.”

  “And the soil samples?” Trokic felt almost as if he was grilling the head pathologist.

  “That’s another story, a more interesting one. Our geologist says it’s a mixture of clay and sand, and it shows signs of pollution.”

  “Pollution?” Lisa said. “What do you mean?”

  “There are particles of oil stuck to some of the grains of sand.”

  Trokic thought about what the journalist had suggested. “We need two men to check out every construction site in the area, have a look around and also take samples for comparison. Volunteers?”

  Two twin officers over on one side raised their hands.

  “But there’s more,” Tønnies said. “There’s quite a bit of pollen mixed in with the soil.”

  “That won’t help much,” Anne Marie said. “Like, we get birch pollen even from other countries, all the way from Finland I hear.”

  “Yes, but this is pollen from coltsfoot, and there’s such a high concentration that it must come from a local source.”

  “Okay,” Trokic said to the twins. “Keep an eye out for a lot of coltsfoot when you’re checking the construction sites. Maybe there’s some spot off to the side where it grows.”

  They nodded in unison.

  “What about footprints?” Taurup asked.

  Tønnies shook his head. “Nope, that’s all. Unfortunately, a lot of our time was spent looking at trash. We gathered up almost fo
rty potential pieces of evidence in the area. Cigarette butts, plastic containers, pieces of paper. Most if not all of it probably has nothing to do with this case.”

  “People are so trashy,” Taurup said.

  “Anything else?” Trokic said.

  “Then there’s the blood in the apartment. We sent a sample to Genetics, but it’ll be a day or two before we get the results.”

  “Okay. We’ll be waiting. Lisa, you had a look at her computer?”

  “Yes. It’s a relatively new laptop; she bought it in January. Which means there’s not a lot of history. Several assignments, a lot of notes, some letters she wrote to various departments and such. She didn’t use her Outlook account a lot, and it’s filled with spam. Maybe she had Hotmail or Gmail, I don’t know—it’s complicated to go through the legal channels, we all know that. At least I can say she hasn’t written or answered any emails on Outlook in the last month. But her computer has been used, she checked her email and read the emails that came in. There’s nothing of particular interest in those emails, except for her not answering any of them, not even invitations and letters from friends. She didn’t create or make changes to any documents within that time period either.”

  Lisa stood up and grabbed a stack of paper. “On the other hand, search history tells us quite a bit. She’s made almost a hundred searches. I’ve listed them and made copies for all of you. I suggest everyone have a look at them; it gives a good indication of what’s been on her mind. Most of them seem ordinary, but maybe something rings a bell for some of you. What stuck out to me was several words that point to an illness, for example, ‘light sensitivity,’ ‘influenza,’ ‘memory loss.’ And she spent a lot of time on Netdoctor.”

  Trokic thought about all the scraps of paper on Maja’s table. He was more certain than ever that Maja had been trying to reconstruct her recent past. But was that something people did during a psychotic episode? Try to understand themselves? Wasn’t it more that people believed in a distorted version of reality?