by Inger Wolf
He studied the dead man on the ground. His sweatshirt had been pushed up a bit on the right side, revealing a tiny slice of a colorful decoration. Carefully Trokic bent down and lifted up the sweatshirt. The theme of the tattoos on the man’s stomach was very unusual. Cockroaches, spiders, and worms crawled over the thin man’s body in a symmetrical pattern. On his chest, a dragon spat out fire, his ribs were traced out in color, and several more insects wandered around. There were also a number of spiderwebs and the outline of a man in a cowl.
“Lovely,” he mumbled to himself.
“This doesn’t look like any of our other cases to me,” Tønnies said. “This looks more like a drug war.”
Trokic nodded. “Kurt, we need a few of your people up in the apartment on Tordenskjoldsgade, too. The sooner the better.”
“You must think we’re an army or something,” Tønnies mumbled. “We have to finish here first.”
Trokic’s phone rang. Morten Lind. “I don’t have time,” he said.
“Yes, you do. I’ve got some bad news, and I mean bad. We went over to seal off the apartment on Tordenskoldsgade, and it was completely, totally, absolutely empty.”
A cold wave ran through Trokic’s body. “The computer? It’s gone?”
“Gone. Everything’s gone. And it smells like soap and chlorine in there. The whole apartment has been cleaned, and I think Tønnies and Company are going to have a tough time finding anything.”
“Crap!” Trokic ground his teeth. “This is really bad.”
Jasper raised his eyebrows and shuffled his feet at Trokic’s cussing, knowing that something had to be terribly wrong. And it definitely was. For a moment, Trokic almost wished he’d let Lisa hack into the thing, if it really had been possible.
“So, I guess we better hope you find something where you are now,” Lind said. He didn’t sound particularly hopeful.
The phone rang again when he got back to his car. By now, the voice was familiar.
“Dragan Delic. I think I have some good news for you.”
Trokic fumbled for his cigarettes. “What?”
“I had a brilliant idea,” the policeman said, sounding very proud of himself. “I checked the list of prisoners after 1995 in Padinska Skela. Padinjak, we call it. Beograd’s main prison, just north of the city. She was there at one time. She was released after three months because she was pregnant, and—”
“Pregnant?” Trokic’s pulse shot up. “Is she alive?”
“That’s what the record showed, according to the prison warden I talked to. Unfortunately, this happened to many of the women captured in Bosnia. They didn’t know what to do with her, and they didn’t want to let the world know they’d kidnapped her. So, they let her out the back door, I think is how to say it. Very quiet. Another woman picked her up, Helena Petrovic. She was easy to find; she’s a lecturer at the University of Beograd.”
Trokic’s mind was racing. She was alive! A stream of images ran through his head, but one thought dominated everything: why hadn’t she come home? It was understandable why she might not have returned immediately, given she was pregnant, and transportation between the two countries was extremely limited during the war. But later on? Could she really have been so ashamed that she would let her family live in limbo, not knowing what had happened to her? Did she think it was better for them to believe she was dead than to know the horrible truth?
Delic continued. “I called the professor an hour ago. At first, she didn’t want to talk about it, but when I said I was calling on your behalf, she loosened up. She agreed to give your telephone number and address to Sinka. So now, it’s simply a matter of waiting.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Trokic said. And he meant it; he felt enormously grateful. In fact, his emotions on the whole were more intense than they had been for years.
“Don’t worry about that. This has been a pleasure for me to do.”
Trokic turned for a last look at the rear courtyard where they’d found Federico. And despite the news he’d been waiting for years to receive, despite his emotions, he was still a detective. His thoughts automatically turned to Dennis Nikolajsen, the man they’d just questioned. A man with a record. Assault. A man with access to weapons through the Danish Home Guard. What was hidden inside the man? Was he capable of pointing a gun at another human being and pulling the trigger?
Chapter Forty-Two
The sea was a sheet of polished steel spanning the bay. Three years ago, here at the Eagle’s Nest ridge, with the forest in the background, Lisa had almost lost Jacob in a man-to-man fight with an unusually sharp criminal they’d been desperately hunting for a week. She’d been out there several times since, in summer sun and winter snow; she wasn’t going to let evil defile an area of such magnificent beauty.
The Eagle’s Nest was deserted that afternoon, the nearby playground empty, the little kiosk not open yet. Too early in the season. The rows of benches were soaked after the recent shower. She glanced skeptically at the sky, all the clouds. But she wasn’t there for the view. She’d heard Trokic speaking in Croatian on the phone as she was about to leave, and she’d heard her name in the jumble of foreign words—the woman Jacob had been about to marry many years ago. And for the first time since she’d been working with him in the Århus Police Department, she sensed an emotional intensity underneath his normally stoic demeanor. No matter what information was being passed along, she didn’t like it. She left with a knot in her stomach.
The building was one of the last old houses in Sabro. Its walls leaned, its thatched roof was covered with moss, and it gave off the strange odor of old straw, rotten leaves, and perennials. The apple trees were gnarled, and the elm trees in front of the house looked diseased. The lawn needed mowing, but the flowerbeds were neat and in good shape, and there were apples and fat balls on the bird feeder. A few places like that still existed in town, spread out in small neighborhoods. Relics from a time when the suburbs had been villages. Small time machines where you could stand for several minutes and let your mind wander through past centuries.
The door opened, and she introduced herself to the old lady, Maja’s grandmother. The woman began to cry, the tears rolling down her wrinkled cheeks like a winding stream, onto the folds of skin on her neck, where they disappeared.
“It’s not more than a week since I wrote down my funeral wishes,” Johanne Nielsen said after showing Lisa into her living room. “I thought about it for two days, exactly how I wanted it to be. The psalms, the flowers, the graveyard, my gravestone. And now, everything seems turned around. We’ll be burying her instead.”
Lisa smelled coffee and various odors from things hidden away. The grandmother had most likely been living in the house a long, long time. There was no sign of a husband; possibly he’d died many years ago.
Lisa sat down in the chair facing her; the poor woman was still crying, though she angrily wiped the tears off her face and pulled at her green, flowered dress.
“We had our disagreements, but she was my granddaughter, and I loved her despite everything. She spent much time with me when she was a child.”
She breathed deeply to get ahold of herself. “What a host I am. I haven’t even offered you a cup of coffee. It’s fresh, I’ll get a cup for you. And a piece of molasses cake.”
Immediately, Lisa’s stomach rumbled. “Thank you, that would be nice.”
After the coffee was poured, Lisa said, “I’m trying to get a clear picture of what was going on in Maja’s head. Recently, she’d suffered from nightmares, and she wrote some very disturbing emails to her friend Clara.”
“Clara, yes. She was with Maja once in a while; they’d known each other for many years. A very nice girl. Her parents lived next door. Back then, they spent a lot of time together.”
“Did you notice any changes in Maja recently?”
“Hmmm. When she was here, she seemed to be herself. I didn’t see her the last month of her life. But that wasn’t so unusual. There were times when
she was too busy to stop by.”
She shook her head. “I doubt very much that anyone knew her the way I did. She was a very complicated girl. She gave me a good deal of trouble when she was younger, in fact.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“She was left to her own devices at home. That made her restless, and she was always testing to see what she could get away with. She could be cruel at times, do and say cruel things. She was always after her cousin Lotte, for instance. Lotte was a few years younger, and Maja lorded it over her. Once, I saw her shove the girl into a tree. Things like that. Then she would hide, always. She was not easy back then. But I do believe she turned into a sensible young woman.”
“And in the past several months?”
“I could tell she was involved in many new things. She spoke quite a bit about her school and her new job.”
“We’ve also spoken to Clara, but she wasn’t really able to tell us much about certain parts of Maja’s life.”
“Sometimes, you think you know someone, but then it turns out they have hidden depths, so to speak. Things you didn’t know about. For some reason, she never picked on Clara. But then you’ve seen her, a terribly pretty girl. You’d have thought Maja would have been jealous, but I do believe she admired Clara.”
“What about a girl by the name of Louise? Does that ring any bells in connection with Maja?”
“No.”
“Have you always lived here?”
“Since my parents died in the early seventies. I inherited the house. It’s from the 1700s, and when I’m gone it will probably be torn down. The rafters have practically rotted away, and the masonry outside is starting to crumble. It would be much too expensive to renovate.”
“That’s so sad.” Lisa meant it, too.
“It was very different back then. Though much has been preserved. The meadows and parks, there’s still red clover and lupines and buttercups, already on their way. Yes, but in general, the area has changed much. The traffic is so hectic.”
Lisa listened patiently as the elderly lady’s mind wandered through the years. Her own grandmother seemed to be living in the past more and more, recalling places and the important events in her life. Maybe it was a gradual process during which a person’s long-term memory moved to the forefront. Maybe there was a purpose to it. To hand down wisdom and knowledge before it was too late, a mechanism to contribute to the survival of our species. At any rate, Lisa’s grandmother had led her to mull over the importance of memories. That there were colors, variations, meaningful events. Things to occupy our minds in our last years, as we sit alone for hours at a time.
“There’s something we’ve been wondering about,” she said, after the woman’s recollections died out. “Some things that Maja seemed preoccupied with in the time before her death. Gray horses is one of them. She seemed to dream about them all the time. Did she take riding lessons when she was young? Her parents don’t seem to know anything about this.”
Her grandmother thought for several moments. “No, not actual riding lessons. I never heard that. But for a period, she did spend time at a farm that had horses. The Horse Farm, it’s called; it’s not far from here. But I can’t imagine it held any particular significance. Girls do have a thing with horses, you know.”
Now they both sat silently for a while, lost in thought.
“But there is a tale around these parts that she knew about. It has to do with ghosts in the form of horses. It’s very old; perhaps that was haunting her in some way. The story goes that there was a barrow nearby with ghost horses, you could hear them in the evenings, when they came to drink water from a well. You had to be careful if you herded a flock of sheep by the barrow, and it was also said that the horses could pass through walls. And if you didn’t behave yourself, they would come for you in the night. Wells held some sort of significance for Maja, and I thought the old tale had scared her.”
Lisa shivered. But had the story planted itself in Maja’s head? She was an adult. Surely, she wouldn’t be frightened by some Middle Age old wives’ tale. Or would she? Could a childhood terror be awakened by a South American drug? What if the darkness had taken control of her? If she’d suddenly begun living in her own world, unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy? The evil animals might have been real to her.
“Children are frightened so easily,” her grandmother said. “I used to play down at the lake when I was a child. My parents told me a spirit lived there, and I believed them. When I grew up, I found out they’d told me that to keep me away from the edge of the water. But the memory of that lake spirit can still scare me.”
Lisa thought that over as she munched on her cake. “Maybe the horses and the well are like your lake. A childhood terror. The type of thing that feels so near and real, and yet it’s so deep inside. When the memory pops up again, it’s like absolutely no time has gone by.”
The elderly lady nodded thoughtfully. “Now that I think about it, she did read my books quite a bit when she was young. Or they would play a game about the horses when she visited. It scared her terribly. Simon especially loved to scare her. I had to give him a talking to about it once. It was a very mean game. But it wasn’t just him; she was just as involved. She egged him on, in fact. They were like brother and sister in that way. I just don’t understand. If she really was disturbed about this, why didn’t she come to me and talk about it?”
Again, Lisa shivered, this time imperceptibly. “Maybe she didn’t want to worry you.”
Or tell you the truth, she thought; all this about Maja was beginning to disturb her. She looked out the window at a squirrel sitting on top of a bird feeder, vigilant as it ate a nut.
The grandmother spoke slowly now. She sounded tired. “It’s strange I didn’t hear from her this last month. But she was busy with her singing. And she was getting that apartment; maybe you know that. To be honest, I wasn’t all that happy about it. Children are given so much nowadays, and my other grandchildren haven’t ever had much. You can’t blame Maja’s father, of course. And yet. There was so much difference.”
In the silence that followed, Lisa considered all she’d been told. Then, as she was about to thank her for the cake and coffee, she saw that the elderly woman was breathing slowly and evenly. Asleep. She carefully picked up her bag and slipped out the front door.
Chapter Forty-Three
The forest floor was blanketed with anemones. Small white suns blazing upward. Most of the trees had leaved out, and for a moment it seemed as if the fog had lifted and spring had sprung. Trokic ran along the small paths through the forest, Storskoven, not far from where Anna Kiehl, a young anthropology student, had been found one late summer morning two and a half years ago, her throat slit open. A gruesome case that had almost cost the life of his friend, Detective Jacob Hviid, and shocked the local citizenry and even the police.
Since then, he had reached the end of his fourth decade on Earth, and new cases, new events had pushed aside everything from back then. But he couldn’t sidestep his age. Lately it felt as if his joints and ligaments moaned at him when he began running. And the forest wasn’t going to help him, either. It had its own life to take care of. First the tiny birch leaves, soft as a baby’s skin, light and elastic, vital. Though, later on, they would stiffen and fall to reunite with the earth below.
Evening was approaching. It was time to get home to the food in the oven and his colleague.
Jasper was drinking a beer on Trokic’s front step, his backpack and an orange shirt on his back. In his beer-less hand he held several sheets of paper.
“I thought you stood me up, then I smelled something by the window. I almost broke in to see if you’d had a heart attack. On the floor, frothing at the mouth, speaking some famous last words.”
“Really?”
“You never know. You work all the time, and at your age—”
Trokic stuck the key in the door and unlocked it. “Oh, come on. I was just out for a run before it got too dark.”
Jasper lifted his backpack by its straps. “I was also seriously worried about my dinner. In the time I’ve been sitting here, it’s started smelling just a wee bit burned. I didn’t come to eat charcoal.”
They stepped into the kitchen, and Trokic peeked into the oven. True, the meat was turning brown, maybe too brown, but it wasn’t close to being charred. Not that close. He lowered the heat and brought out the marinated potatoes from the refrigerator. An easy dinner. His colleague seemed satisfied as he watched Trokic work.
“What are those green things on the floor?” Jasper said.
“Ant bait.”
“Gross. I hate ants. Hey, there’s the cat. Hi, Kitty. We could make one fine little handbag out of you, you know that?”
“It doesn’t like you.”
It was true. The cat stared in disgust at Jasper. God only knew what unpleasant associations were being made in the animal’s head.
“Yeah, I see that.”
When Jasper was done eating, when peace once again prevailed in the house, Trokic brought up the subject that had been eating at him most of the day. “Our connection to the burundanga is gone.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that now. Let’s concentrate on Dennis Nikolajsen. We both think he’s involved. He’s been working at the harbor, and we don’t believe in coincidence.”
That was true enough. Coincidence was a mystery they’d spent countless hours discussing. Nothing seemed to be a coincidence, and their discussions had taken them far and wide, including into chaos theory and intelligent design.
Trokic sighed. “We just have to keep bringing him in until he breaks.”
Jasper pointed at a shelf with long, twisted bottles. Green, brown, opaque, blue, pink. “What, you collect glass? I’d never have guessed that.”
Trokic shook his head. “Those are wine bottles I brought home from Croatia, the last few times I’ve been down there.”
