Songbird (Daniel Trokics Series Book 3)

by Inger Wolf

  ”Yeah, that’s how I see it too. But anyway. Right now we have our hands full, we need to get hold of Martin Isaksen and hear what he has to say about this new information.”

  He picked up his phone and called the officer on duty. ”Let’s keep a low profile on this. I’ll tell him we want to have a little talk, but I won’t tell him why. Then you go in and question him. In the meantime I’ll follow along with Kornelius.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  The farmhouse was surrounded by several elm trees at the end of a long gravel drive. The afternoon sun slanted in over the landscape, but a cold wind swept away the heat. Fields, woods, and marshland lay nearby, while the nearest houses were far away. Three horses, two black and one tan, were grazing in a fenced-in pasture. A small colt with black and brown markings and a long stringy coat pressed against its mother, and unlike the other horses it watched Trokic’s blue Honda Civic approach. A girl around twelve years of age holding carrots in one hand and a halter in the other ducked under the fence. A track with lights lined the other side of the pasture. Another young girl was walking an enormous white horse, cooling it off after a run.

  ”This place is definitely out in the sticks,” Trokic said. He turned down the radio.

  They parked in a small clearing and got out.

  Lisa slammed the car door shut. ”Let’s start with that girl on the track.”

  The girl had just dismounted and run up the stirrups. She pulled off her helmet and shook her long red hair.

  ”Could we ask you a few questions?” Trokic said, as the girl left the track.

  ”What about?”

  ”We’re from the Århus police.” Trokic pulled out his badge to help persuade the girl to talk to them.

  She glanced at the badge. ”What’s it about?” she repeated.

  ”We’d like to talk to someone who was around here eight or ten years ago.”

  ”I was one of them.”

  ”So maybe you remember Maja Nielsen?”

  The girl turned white as a sheet as she squeezed the reins in her hand. ”Maja Nielsen? The girl who just got murdered?”

  ”Yes.” Trokic pulled out a cigarette from his inside pocket and lit it, thinking it might drive off all the swarming horseflies. ”We heard she took riding lessons here.”

  ”She did, yeah, even though this isn’t really a riding school. It’s just a private stable. But there were riding lessons twice a week. It wasn’t like real serious lessons, just some of the older girls showing some of the younger ones around how to ride. They stopped five years ago. Somebody built a riding school close to here, and that’s where the girls started going.”

  ”So you knew her?”

  ”Not well, but her name is sort of unusual, and yeah, I remember her. She hung out and helped curry the horses and take care of the harnesses, sometimes just to get an extra ride. But what does the Horse Farm have to do with the killing?”

  ”We’re looking for a connection between Maja Nielsen and the woman who was run over by a car last week, Anja Mikkelsen.”

  The cold wind carried the smell of horse and earth and sawdust over to them. The red-haired girl looked even paler underneath the track lights.

  ”Is Anja dead too?”

  ”No, but she’s in a coma at the hospital. It was a hit-and-run driver.”

  ”But it must be a coincidence?”

  ”That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Trokic said.

  ”I knew Anja too, a little bit better, she’s closer to my age. She rode Sampson quite a bit during the lessons. She even drops by for a ride once in a while. But I don’t know how well the two of them knew each other. I don’t remember ever seeing them hanging out together. Anja’s nice, but I never really liked Maja.”

  ”Why not?” Trokic’s perception of Maja Nielsen was gradually crumbling.

  ”She was bossy, not very nice to the young girls.”

  She patted the sweaty horse’s neck.

  ”We haven’t been all that lucky here at the farm,” she said, as much to herself as to the others. ”We’ve had some serious accidents the past few years. One girl fell off while practicing jumps and broke her back. And six months later another girl got kicked in the face, she broke her jaw. And then there was that girl who disappeared, and now this. I think I’ll find another stable for Samson.”

  Trokic glanced over at Lisa. ”A girl disappeared? Who was it?”

  ”She was pretty young. But I really don’t know much, it was before I started. I don’t remember her name, and anyway it didn’t have anything to do with this place, I don’t think. There’s not many weirdos around here. Mostly it’s us girls and the man who owns the place, and he’s over eighty now.”

  ”Do you know a Martin Isaksen? He’s the older brother of another girl who came here. She lives in America, and we can’t get hold of her.”

  ”Tina Isaksen, was his sister probably. I never met her brother, but I know he usually picked her up.”

  So. It was true. The real estate agent was also familiar with this place, and he’d lied to them. What else had he lied about?

  ”Did the girl who disappeared board her horse here?”

  ”Yeah, she had a New Forest. A brown gelding. She was getting too big for it. The horse is still here, matter of fact, one of the other girls bought it.”

  ”Thank you for your help,” Trokic said. ”Is it okay if we look around?”

  ”Sure. There’s not so much here, you can find your way around okay. There’s room for ten horses, and we run things ourselves, more or less. I mean, we take care of all the horses and keep an eye on the place. The owner almost never shows up, and as far as I know that’s the way it’s always been.”

  They walked over to the red brick buildings, likely from the 1920s, with the girl and Samson on their heels. There was a farmhouse, a stable, and what looked like a barn about fifty meters farther on. The air smelled of manure, horses, and the blossoms from two Japanese cherry trees on the edge of the parking area.

  ”There’s a little kitchen inside the house, and a place to change clothes. That’s where we hold meetings and plan things out. Then there’s the stable over there with all the horses. If you go inside, don’t stick your hand in that first stall, the tan mare. She bites.”

  There was zero chance of Trokic ever doing that. He pointed over at the barn. ”And that?”

  ”That’s where all our straw and hay is stored, and extra feed sacks, some other stuff we don’t use very often.”

  Trokic turned to Lisa. ”Let’s look around a few minutes before we get back to the station.”

  He strode into the stable with Lisa on his heels. Now the air smelled strongly of horses and oil from the saddles hanging on one wall. At the other end, the girl they’d seen earlier with her horse looked busy, and two girls the same age sat in a corner on a bale of hay, murmuring to each other. All three of them were too young to know about the farm back then

  Trokic spoke softly too. ”I don’t see anything that’s going to help us. And I’m having trouble imagining anything bad happening here.” The red-haired girl had left her horse outside and hung her saddle up, and now she was washing the bit under running water.

  ”Why don’t we check out the barn,” Trokic said.

  The barn was warmer than the stable, as it was insulated by all the bales of straw and hay stacked up along one wall. A slice of sunlight slipped through the skylight, revealing a heavy layer of dust. Lisa sneezed. The air was dry, and underneath the smell of hay lurked the faint odor of molasses, oil, paint, and earth. An old, beat-up tractor stood at the far end of the barn, along with a few big barrels of rusty screws.

  ”Definitely out in the sticks,” Lisa said. ”Not much going on late at night. Isn’t it a little bit scary that young girls run around here in the evening? Easy prey for an ambush from a predator. Would anyone hear someone screaming?”

  Suddenly chills ran down Trokic’s spine. ”Her name was Louise.”

  ”Who?”

&
nbsp; ”The girl that disappeared, I remember now. She was eleven years old. It was a major case for us, also for the media. I wasn’t on it, but I’m sure that’s the one. The parents must have come here looking for her. Surely we did too.”

  Lisa turned pale. ”It could be our Louise, the one Maja mentioned. The missing link. I don’t remember it, I was in Copenhagen back then. What happened?”

  ”After she went missing for a few days, everyone assumed she was the victim of a crime or serious accident. She never showed up.”

  Trokic thought it over. What if they were on the wrong track, what if Nikolajsen was innocent? If what he said happened in the apartment was true, and somebody else killed Maja? Isaksen knew about this farm because of his sister, he could have been involved in Louise’s disappearance. Maybe Maja learned some secret about him. Trokic shivered. He could have a motive. And he knew about the apartments on the harbor. But what actually went on here at the farm?

  ”We need to get back and have a look at the report,” Trokic said. ”Then bring Isaksen in again.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Lisa cut the slices of pizza and slid them onto two plates. Trokic was circumnavigating his house, opening windows. The sun had been shining in all day, and it was 30°C in the living room. He changed into a blue T-shirt in his bedroom. They’d picked up the report at the station, but neither of them wanted to sit in the close quarters of his hot, humid office, so they’d decided to work in the peace and quiet of his small house while catching a bite to eat. No one had managed to find Martin Isaksen, and Trokic was afraid he’d left the country.

  ”Let’s sit out on the terrace.” Trokic grabbed the plates and went outside.

  They ate most of the two pizzas and washed them down with cola, then after they set their plates and glasses on the tiled terrace floor, they started in on the reports.

  ”Okay, here’s what we have,” Trokic said, his eyes on the stack of papers. ”On August 8, 2000, Louise Sørensen left home after dinner, around seven-thirty. She’d had an argument with her parents about a camping trip, she didn’t want to go because of her horse. When she wasn’t back by half past midnight, and after they’d called around to other family members and friends, they contacted the police. The police told them to wait until the next morning, and to call again if she still hadn’t showed up. At seven the next morning they called and said that they and family and friends had been looking everywhere they could think of. After being given a description of Louise, the police sent a dog patrol out and searched the neighborhood.”

  Trokic leafed back and forth among the papers. ”During the investigation the police also went out to The Horse Farm, where Louise’s horse was being stabled.”

  Lisa swatted at one of the first mosquitoes of the evening buzzing her eyes. ”Did they take the dogs along?”

  ”Yes, but they didn’t follow any trail out from the area. That evening she was reported missing on radio and TV.”

  ”How about witnesses, anyone see her?”

  Trokic thumbed through the papers. ”A neighbor mowing the lawn saw her biking away to the north. A couple farther down the street confirmed that.”

  ”Was it in the direction of the riding school?”

  Trokic checked the map. ”No, actually not. Maybe that’s why no one prioritized the farm that much.”

  ”But she could have changed her mind,” Lisa said.

  Trokic lit a cigarette and blew smoke up in the air.

  ”And no other witnesses?” Lisa said.

  ”No. But during another search, Forensics helped by gathering material with a possible connection to a crime. They didn’t find anything.”

  ”What about the lake behind the farm?”

  ”They sent a few divers in. Nothing there.”

  Lisa looked skeptical. ”I’m really beginning to wonder if this has anything to do with Maja. They happened to go to the same riding school, and it may be a strange coincidence, but likely nothing more than that.”

  Trokic shrugged. ”At any rate, she never showed up again. Something happened.”

  ”So what do we do?”

  ”We have to wait until we talk to Isaksen before we can draw any more conclusions.”

  She nodded. She looked at the cat lying in the shade underneath Trokic’s hedge. ”Nice little yard you have. But it looks a little bit like a churchyard with all the gravel out there, shouldn’t you plant some things?”

  Trokic stared at her. Did he look like a gardener?

  ”No, you probably shouldn’t,” she said. ”I’d like to go back to The Horse Farm, take another look around. Maybe some other girls have shown up, I could have a word with them too.”

  Fifteen minutes after Lisa had left, Trokic was still staring blankly, trying to make the pieces of this puzzle fit. Every time they followed a line of inquiry, the contradictions started piling up. Dennis Nikolajsen hadn’t known Anja Mikkelsen, and something about his possible involvement simply didn’t mesh. Martin Isaksen fit better into what they knew of the events in the case, but why had Maja been in that greenhouse with her clothes all bloody? Had she seen something?

  His phone rang.

  ”Taurup! Listen, Daniel! I just spoke to one of Isaksen’s colleagues, Isaksen had just been by the office, he’s going to Sabro to look at a house.”

  Silence.

  ”What does it mean?” Jasper said. ”It can’t be a coincidence that he’s on his way out to Sabro, can it?”

  ”There must be something out there,” Trokic said. ”Evidence he wants to get rid of. You remember Lisa saying she thought he’d been cruising around out there, the day before yesterday?”

  ”What could it be, though? Something about that girl, Louise?”

  After a few moments, Trokic said, ”Or he wants to get hold of the only other person I can think of who could connect him, Maja, and Anja together. Maja’s cousin. Who happens to live out there. Oh my God.”

  ”Would Simon have been aware of both of those girls back then? And would he even remember now?”

  ”Maybe not. But maybe that’s not a chance Isaksen is willing to take.”

  ”Simon might be in danger. Big time.”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Several young girls were out at the farm that evening. The final rays from the sun lit up the red buildings. A group of people with shaky legs were laughing and thanking one of the girls. Most likely riders not used to horses. They walked over to their parked cars. Lisa introduced herself to one of the older girls. She was extremely thin – anorexic? – with a slightly flat nose and two braids. While washing her hands under a faucet outside of stable, she managed to hold onto the lead rope on a tan mare. The water ran down onto the dry ground and disappeared in a grate. Finally the girl held out her hand.

  ”Sanne.”

  ”Who were those people? They didn’t look like they ride a lot.”

  ”Someone had a birthday, and they all came out for a group ride.”

  ”Do you do a lot of that out here?”

  ”Yeah, we have a deal, we can use each other’s horses, the guide gets fifty crowns and the rest goes for our yearly camping trip ride.”

  Lisa patted the horse; a faint cloud of dust rose around her hand. ”Where do you ride on these guided tours?”

  ”Different places. Most times we take them around the old apple orchard over there.”

  She pointed across the fields.

  ”Back and forth, sometimes a gallop along the fence line.” She smiled a bit impishly. ”If we think they won’t fall off.”

  ”Can you show me?”

  ”Just follow the old tractor tracks that start over there.”

  ”Is there anything special there?”

  ”Not really. It’s just a bunch of old apple trees, some of them got blown down in the storm back in ’99. So they have to walk the horses around the trunks, also a bunch of old bricks from the building that used to be there. It’s like an obstacle course.”

  The girl lifted the bridle off
the horse, replacing it with a halter. ”Is this about that girl who disappeared, a long time ago?”

  ”Partly. One of the other girls said you’ve had a streak of bad luck out here.”

  ”Something really bad happened to me here, too. I had a horse when I was younger, and one Saturday morning when I came out it was all tangled up in barbed wire. Its head was cut off, gone. Some psycho who hates horses, I guess.”

  ”Barbed wire?”

  ”Yeah, we changed some of the pastures and took down some barbed wire fence. We don’t use barbed wire, we don’t want anyone to get hurt. But somebody must’ve forgotten to take a roll of it out of the pasture, and the bastard got my horse tangled up in it somehow. Nobody would admit they’d forgotten the roll.”

  ”But you must have reported it?” Lisa said.

  ”Of course, but the police never found the guy.”

  Lisa’s blood ran cold. The place had not only been victimized by bad luck, but also by a sick human being. ”That’s horrible. What about Maja Nielsen and Anja Mikkelsen, two girls who came here several years ago. Did you know either of them?”

  ”Yeah, I knew them both. Anja was the one who found my horse out there that morning. That was a real shock for her.”

  Lisa nodded. She had the feeling that Anja’s hate for animal abusers had begun right here. ”Did any of you consider that it may have been one of you?”

  The girl looked incredulous. ”Nobody here would hurt a horse.”

  ”And you say you knew Maja?”

  ”Yeah. We didn’t get along so well. I wouldn’t let her ride my horse. At first she did, it was like she was obsessed with him, she talked about him like he was hers. I didn’t like that, so I told her she couldn’t ride him anymore. After that she hated me, I mean really. Then after my horse got killed and its head cut off, it was like she was happy about it. She didn’t get along with hardly anybody, and then all of a sudden she stopped coming.”