by Andrea Mara
“To make a child come to a stream, he changes into a beautiful white horse. The child sits on its back, and the horse runs into the water to drown the child. Sometimes Nøkken disguise to look like a tree, to make people think the water edge is far away – to trick them to fall in. And to steal young women, they disguise as handsome young man.”
I swallowed, mesmerised and cold all at once.
“How did they steal the women?”
“By playing beautiful music to draw them close. By playing the violin.”
CHAPTER 36
On Wednesday morning, I took the now familiar route to Damtoften, determined to confess to Dina, but again there was no answer at the door. This time the car was there. Maybe she’d gone out with Erik, perhaps they had two cars? I dug into my backpack for my mobile phone, and searched for her number.
What would I say? “This is Linda, only not Linda”? I waited as the phone rang, distracted and nervous, then suddenly aware of a sound from inside. A ringing.
Was she there after all? The sound seemed to be coming from the hall, but there were no glass panels in the front door, so I walked to the window on the right-hand side. It looked into a living-room area, neat, clean, and empty of humans or ringing phones. I tried the window on the other side, and found myself looking at a bedroom. I could make out a narrow, single divan covered with a white sheet, stark like an empty hospital bed. Two framed prints – seascapes, I think – hung on the wall above a neat white dresser. The other walls were bare. A notebook sat on the dresser top but the room was otherwise devoid of personal touches. Hanne’s room? Something shifted inside me as I stood staring, and in my head a distant ghost took shape.
Back at the front door, I tried the phone a second time, and again I could hear it ringing. But no movement. No scurrying steps. Could something have happened to her? I eyed up the path that led to the back of the house and figured I was unlikely to get in trouble for trespassing in my own grandparents’ garden. Following the path around to the back, I peered in the kitchen window at the same grey couch I’d sat on two days earlier. No Dina. The other window must be their bedroom. Feeling uncomfortable, but not to the point that it actually stopped me, I tried to look in. The blind was down. Probably a good thing, I thought, as I ducked back to the front of the house and down the driveway. Dina was perhaps out without her phone, or in the shower – there were any number of explanations. I pushed away niggling worries, and headed for the town centre.
Back in the library, armed with a guest pass, I sat at a computer, and logged on to my email. Nothing new from Dina, but then she had no reason to contact me again – I still owed her a reply. I clicked into Google and threw words into the search box: Hanne Karlsen blonde man dark-haired man ice-cream van white van violin lake. I was operating on a mud-sticking-to-walls premise and it was far too random to give me anything useful.
I tried it again, using “Denmark” instead of her name, because I’d already read every single article that referenced Hanne Karlsen. The results were a mish-mash of disturbing suicide stories and studies on hair-colour around Europe. I tried replacing “Denmark” with “Købæk” and scrolled through an even more random set of results. Then, on the third page, I found it. Her name jumped out at me from the title: “Frederikke Frandsen”, followed by some Danish words I didn’t understand.
Frederikke Frandsen – one of the two women killed the same year as Hanne. I clicked into what looked like a Danish newspaper website and copied the text into Google Translate.
In English, the headline read: Frederikke Frandsen: Witnesses Report to See White Van. The translation was jerky in parts but the gist of it was clear: a neighbour of the victim had reported seeing a van, light in colour, near the victim’s house the day before she died. The neighbour had been interviewed by a reporter from a local newspaper a year after the murder, and said she didn’t think the police had taken her seriously. The reporter went on to reference a similar case in Købæk but didn’t mention Hanne’s name.
I sat staring at the screen. Did Inspector Nielsen know about this? I picked up my backpack and pushed back the chair.
Inspector Nielsen didn’t seem at all surprised to see me, and his lack of excitement about my discovery was, in hindsight, predictable.
“As I explained to you yesterday, Ms McShane, there is always a white van. It is what people remember when someone goes missing. In fact, every day, we are surrounded by such vehicles and it means nothing. But as soon as something happens, we get witnesses with these stories. And, of course, we investigate all of the reports but most of the time it is nothing.”
I slumped in the hard plastic chair, feeling the air go out of me.
Inspector Nielsen took pity.
“But it’s good that you are looking, and please do tell me if you discover anything. Did you speak to your friend Asta again?”
“Yes, and I met her mother too. She told me the same thing as you did about a blond man and a dark-haired man but, when I asked for more details, it turned out she didn’t actually see them at all. Their neighbour says she saw the dark-haired man but has no idea who saw the blond man.”
“Who is this neighbour?” he asked, lifting his pen.
Again I felt guilty bringing their names into it, but then Fru Hansen had said she reported it to the police herself. “Fru Hansen. I don’t know her first name.”
“Ah yes, Inge Hansen, I saw her name in the reports.” He looked up at me, as though trying to decide on something.
I waited, but he didn’t say anything further. Nor did he write down her name.
“Is there any chance the blond man is a bit like the white van – it didn’t really happen?” I asked.
He lifted his hands and shrugged. “Maybe. One person says they saw something and soon everyone is saying the same. Memory is funny like that – people hear something many times, and it becomes real to them. Memory is adaptable and can be contaminated by hearing the same thing again and again. It gets muddy.” He stopped and pushed back his chair and it seemed the meeting was over, then he remembered something else.
“Did you speak to Dina Karlsen again – did you explain that you are Hanne’s daughter?”
“I tried, but she wasn’t there. It was weird. I was at her door ringing her phone, and I could hear her phone ringing inside the house, but there was no answer. I looked in all the windows in case something happened to her but I couldn’t see into the hall . . .”
“Maybe she was out without her phone? Older people are not so attached to their cell phones as we are.” He smiled, showing those tiny sharp teeth again.
“I know . . . Still, I couldn’t help worrying a tiny bit.”
He pulled his own phone out.
“Give me her number and I will try,” he said.
I pushed my phone across the table, and he typed in Dina’s number. I listened as he put the phone to his ear, though I couldn’t hear anything. His face changed, and he spoke in Danish. He laughed, said something else, and disconnected.
“That was Dina – there is no problem. I said it was a wrong number.” He tapped the side of his nose and grinned. “Don’t tell, okay?”
Walking fast, it took only ten minutes to reach Dina’s house. Her car was still there, I noticed, as I rang the bell. But again there was no answer. She’d hardly gone out again so quickly, had she? I stood still, listening.
And suddenly it felt like there was someone on the other side of the door, doing exactly what I was doing – standing still, listening.
I glanced at Fru Hansen’s house across the road and a tiny suspicion took hold. Pulling out my phone, I searched for Dina’s number and hit Call, then pressed my ear to the door. This time the sound of her phone ringing was just inches from me, I was sure of it.
“Dina, can you open the door so we can talk?”
Silence.
“I haven’t been quite honest with you, and I’d really like to explain.”
Still nothing.
“This isn’
t how I pictured saying it, but I suspect you already know so I’ll just go ahead. I’m Hanne’s daughter, your granddaughter.”
No response.
“I’ve never asked anything of you, and never judged you for not staying in contact. But my dad has passed away now, and there’s nobody left.” I swallowed as the words caught me. “I just want to know more about Hanne, and to get to know you. Please?”
The sound of the latch. The door opening.
Dina looking at me. Her grey blouse, similar to the one she’d worn on Monday. The same pearls, the same golden-bird brooch, the same neatly combed slate-grey hair. But somehow an entirely different person. Her face drawn and pinched, her eyes shiny with tears, her cheeks blotchy. She shook her head, her hand still on the latch. When she spoke, her voice was a tightly pulled string.
“Go, and do not ever come back here, Linda.” She moved to close the door as she delivered her parting words. “I have no granddaughter.”
CHAPTER 37
I held back tears until I was safely inside my hostel bedroom, where I curled in a ball on the scratchy blanket, and cried like I hadn’t done in years. This was the furthest outcome from the one I’d pictured when I arrived on Sunday afternoon.
My phone started to ring and, as I groped for it, a speck of hope flickered – maybe Dina had changed her mind?
But it wasn’t Dina. It was Ray. I cleared my throat to hide the tears.
“There you are, I was getting worried,” he said by way of greeting. “You didn’t phone me back last night?”
“Yeah, I got confused about the time difference and then it was a bit late.” I lay back on the bed, looking up at the cracked ceiling.
Silence.
“Sorry, Ray, I really did mean to call.”
“Right. Anyway, did you find out who killed your mother?”
“No.” I tried to think of something else to say, but where to start?
“I hate to say I told you so, but . . . Did you see your grandmother?”
“Yeah . . .”
“And?”
And it all came out in a rush – the lie, the conversations with the neighbours, the confrontation that morning.
“Ah. And how did your grandmother find out who you really are?”
“I don’t know, but maybe the neighbour Mrs Hansen said it. I never thought to tell her the Linda story. And now it’s such a mess. God, I’m an idiot.”
“It doesn’t matter though – the police are reopening the case so they’ll take care of that side. And you never had a relationship with your grandparents anyway – you can’t miss what you don’t have. All of my grandparents are dead for years and I turned out okay.”
I closed my eyes and covered them with my free hand, pressing the phone to my ear with the other.
“I wanted to find out more about Hanne though, and –”
I paused, staring at blackness and pinpricks of light, looking for the right words.
“And?”
“And I wanted to find out why she left. Why she walked away from my dad and me. The neighbours can tell me all about how funny and kind Hanne was as a child, and all about strange men and white vans and violin music, but nobody can tell me what I really want to know. Why did she walk out on us?”
By the time I got off the phone from Ray, I had talked myself down from booking the next flight back to Dublin, but only just. I had no idea what to do though – Inspector Nielsen would go into hiding if I kept turning up at the police station, there was nothing much in the library, and the idea of going anywhere near Damtoften again made me feel sick.
A soft knock at my bedroom door interrupted my thoughts. There was someone looking to see me, a girl said when I answered. I thanked her and took a quick look in the mirror above the sink – my eyes were red and puffy, my hair a straw-like mess. I splashed water on my face and smoothed down my hair before leaving, locking my bedroom door behind me.
In the common area, curled up in a giant armchair, leafing through a magazine, I found Asta.
I pulled up a chair and sat.
“I guess you saw Dina,” she said, closing the magazine.
“Yep,” I sighed. “She knows who I am, and she doesn’t want to see me ever again, so that went well.”
“I’m so sorry. We should have warned Fru Hansen not to say anything. She saw Dina yesterday evening and told her how lovely it was to meet her granddaughter. That was the end of Linda.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “I should have thought of it. I was so drawn into her story of Nøkken, I forgot about everything else.”
“Ah, Nøkken, yes. Fru Hansen loves her folk tales.”
“Do you think there’s anything in it?”
“What?” Asta laughed. “Do I think your mother was taken by an evil water spirit?” She stopped laughing almost immediately. “Sorry, it’s not funny.”
“I don’t mean literally,” I said, “but there must be a reason Fru Hansen told the story. I keep thinking about what she said – the spirit disguised as a golden-haired man, playing a violin to lure women to drown in a lake. There was all that talk of a blond man, and of violin music, and there’s a lake near here, isn’t there?”
“Yes, Fugl Sø. It’s about 15 kilometres from here. That’s not where your mother was found though.”
“No, but all the same there’s something kind of haunting about it – the spirit and the forest and the lake and the music. I dreamed about it last night.”
“That’s not surprising,” Asta said, uncurling her legs and stretching like a cat. “Fru Hansen has a way of telling stories that gets right in. When we were small, we used to go to her house after school, and she would tell us fairy tales like ‘Thumbelina’ and ‘The Little Match Girl’ and ‘The Snow Queen’, and stories she made up herself about trolls and goblins and the Bøhmand. I was convinced I was going to be stolen by a giant toad to be married off to her toad son, like poor Thumbelina. My mother would go crazy because I couldn’t sleep without a light on. Still Fru Hansen told her stories.”
“But why, if they were frightening for you?”
“I guess she saw them as cautionary tales – don’t cross bridges, don’t go near open water, don’t stray far from home because you never know what’s lurking in the forest.” She looked up at me, her dark eyes unblinking. “Perhaps the old fairy tales did what reading about true crime does now – cautionary tales, creating distance. It happened to them, it won’t happen to me.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but it wasn’t a question.
“People have always made up stories to explain things that are frightening or things they can’t understand,” she continued. “It’s what humans have been doing forever. When bad stuff happens, we don’t want to believe we did it to each other or to ourselves. So it was the Nøkken or the Bøhmand or the bogeyman or Candyman. Have you seen that movie?”
I nodded.
“And did you say ‘Candyman’ five times in front of the mirror to see if he’d come?”
I smiled. “Absolutely. My friend Linda and I did it together in the bathroom in her house. We were terrified he’d appear but then it was kind of a let-down when nothing happened.”
Asta laughed. “Me too, my brother and me freaking out when we heard a noise behind us after we said it, but it was only my mother coming up the stairs.”
“But Candyman is just a movie – Fru Hansen sounded so serious talking about Nøkken.”
“Sure, but it’s the same thing. We like to be scared, but it’s more than that – it’s a –” she stopped, searching for a word, “a defence mechanism of a kind, don’t you think? If we hear the stories about the monster, and tell the stories about the monster, he won’t come to us. Cautionary tales, warding off evil.” She smiled. “As I said, just like your true crime stories. I think if Fru Hansen had a computer, she’d be like you, reading about all the crazy, scary things in the world, and telling us the Zodiac Killer is from Købæk. Oh!” She paused and reached down to pick up her ba
ttered satchel from the floor, pulling it onto her knee. “She sent you something,” she said, rummaging inside. “Here it is.”
She handed me a white envelope, yellowing at the corners, addressed in blue ink, a postage stamp in the top corner.
“What is it?”
“Open it and see.”
Inside there was a postcard, with a picture that was instantly recognisable to any Irish person – a John Hinde image of a thatched cottage. I flipped to see who it was from, but the tiny, cramped writing was in Danish. It was addressed to “Inge”. My eyes skimmed to the end, where one word stood out: Hanne.
“This was written by my mother?”
Asta nodded. “Yes, she sent it to Fru Hansen when she was in Ireland. Look in the envelope, there’s more. She translated it for you.”
I pulled out a sheet of paper. In neat script, Fru Hansen had indeed translated the postcard.
Dear Inge,
I hope you are well. Me, I’m not so good. I find myself in a cage of my own making and I may have to leave. It is difficult to explain, but I have a reason – you will understand when I see you. I cannot bear to tell my parents, but soon I fear I will have no choice. They warned me against all of it – coming here, marrying him, having the baby, and I did not listen. I can’t swallow the humiliation so easily, but more than that, I cannot stay here. Will you help me tell them?
Yours,
Hanne
I read it again, and a third time.
“Do you know what it says?” I asked Asta, and she nodded.
“I helped translate. Why do you think she needed to leave?”
“I have no idea,” I said, shaking my head. “I found a letter in our attic late last year, from Hanne to my dad. She told him she wasn’t coming back to Ireland, and she said something about a cage then too. It read as though she had decided she wasn’t bothered with being a wife and mother and wanted her freedom. Maybe there was something else to it though.”
