The Absent One (4 page)

He stared at his tired hands that hardly had the stamina to hold a lousy one-inch file, the origins of which were unclear. The word ‘success’, at this moment, gave him a hollow feeling. He sighed and continued reading the file. Two young people murdered, a very brutal double murder, with several children of prominent families as suspects, and nine years later one of these kids suddenly turns himself in, admitting his guilt. He was the only one of the gang who didn’t actually come from a wealthy family. In less than three years, this Thøgersen would be released. He would be rich as hell, too, having earned a fortune on the stock market during his incarceration. Were people in prison even allowed to invest like that? It was a damned scary thought.

He read copies of the interrogation reports thoroughly and then, for the third time, skimmed the documents in the case against Bjarne Thøgersen. The killer apparently hadn’t known his victims. Even though the convicted man claimed he had met them several times, there was no corroborating evidence to prove it. Indeed, the reports suggested otherwise.

Carl glanced again at the cover of the file. ‘Holbæk Police’, it said. Why didn’t it say ‘Nykøbing’? Why didn’t the Mobile Investigation Unit work with the Nykøbing Police? Were the officers in Nykøbing too close to the
case? Could that be the explanation? Or were they just incompetent?

‘Hey, Assad!’ he shouted across the brightly lit hallway. ‘Call the department in Nykøbing and ask if anyone there knew the victims.’

There was no response from Assad’s cubbyhole, just his murmuring on the telephone.

Carl stood and walked across the corridor. ‘Assad, ask if anyone at the station –’

Assad stopped him with a hand movement. He was already in full swing. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said, followed by another series of yeses in the same vein.

Carl exhaled heavily, and scanned the room. More framed photographs had appeared on Assad’s shelf. A picture of two elderly women now competed with the other family snapshots. One of the women had a trace of a moustache, the other was podgy, with hair so thick it resembled a scooter helmet. Assad’s aunts, if he were to hazard a guess.

When Assad hung up, Carl pointed at the photos.

‘Those are my aunts from Hamah. The one with the hair is dead now.’

Carl nodded. The way she looked, any other answer would have surprised him. ‘What’d they say in Nykøbing?’

‘They didn’t send us the file, either, Carl. For good reasons they couldn’t. They never got it.’

‘I see. That’s peculiar, because the documents suggest that the police in Nykøbing, Holbæk and the Mobile Investigation Unit all worked together.’

‘No. They say that Nykøbing was in charge of the inquest, but left the case to the others.’

‘Really? I find that rather odd. Do you know if anyone in Nykøbing knew the victims personally?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘The two victims were the son and daughter of one of the officers.’ He pointed at the notes he had just taken. ‘His name was Henning P. Jørgensen.’

Carl pictured the savagely beaten girl. It was any police officer’s worst nightmare to find their own children murdered.

‘How awful. But I suppose that explains why the case was handed over to another station. I’ll bet you there is a personal motivation behind it. But you said yes and no. Why?’

Assad leaned back in his chair. ‘I did it because there is no longer anyone at the station who is related to those children. Right after the discovery, the officer drove back to the police station in Nykøbing Sjælland. He greeted the guy at the front desk, went straight to the weapons depot and pulled the trigger on his service revolver like this.’ He pointed at his temple with two short, thick fingers.

The Danish police reform brought many strange results. Districts were renamed, titles were changed and archives were moved. All in all, most personnel had difficulty finding their footing in all this lunacy. Plenty used the opportunity to jump off the merry-go-round, accepting the title of ‘early retiree’.

In the old days, retirement for a police officer hadn’t exactly been a walk in the park. The average number of years they had left to live after such an exhausting career
didn’t even reach two digits. Only reporters had worse prospects, but then again, many more pints probably passed through that profession. Death had to have a cause, after all.

Carl knew officers who hadn’t even made it to their first anniversary as a pensioner before they kicked the bucket, leaving the world in the hands of freshly minted lackeys. But thankfully things were changing. Even police officers wanted to see the world, wanted to see their grandchildren get their A levels. As a consequence, many left the force. Like Klaes Thomasen, a retired cop from Nykøbing Sjælland who stood before them now with his potbelly, nodding. Thirty-five years in blue was enough, he said. These days his wife exerted a stronger pull on him. Even though the part about the wife gnawed at Carl a little, he knew what Klaes meant. Technically, of course, he, too, still had a wife, but it had been ages since she’d left him, and her undersized lovers with their long Vandykes would no doubt protest if he insisted on having her back.

As if he would ever try.

‘A very lovely place you’ve got,’ Assad said. Impressed, he stared through the double windows at the fields surrounding Klaes Thomasen’s well-tended garden and the town of Stenløse beyond.

‘Thanks for taking the time to see us, Thomasen,’ Carl said. ‘There aren’t many officers left who knew Henning Jørgensen.’

Klaes’s smile vanished. ‘The best friend and colleague anyone could ask for. We were neighbours. That’s one reason we moved. After all that happened, his widow took ill
and started acting batty and we no longer liked living there. Too many bad memories.’

‘I understand that Henning Jørgensen was unprepared for who the victims were in that summer cottage?’

Thomasen shook his head. ‘We got a call from a neighbour who’d stopped by the cottage and discovered the dead kids. I was the one who answered. Jørgensen was off that day. But when he drove out to pick up his children he saw all the police cars. They would have begun their final school year the following day.’

‘Were you there when he arrived?’

‘Yes, along with the crime-scene techs and the head of the investigation.’ He shook his head again. ‘He’s dead, too, now. Car accident!’

Assad pulled out a pad and took notes. Before long, Carl’s assistant would be able to do everything on his own. Carl looked forward to that day.

‘What did you see in the cottage?’ he asked. ‘Just the general outline would be fine.’

‘The doors and windows were wide open. There were several footprints. We never found the shoes, but we did find sand that we later traced back to the terrace of the parents of one of the suspects. And then we entered the living room and found the bodies on the floor.’ He sat down on the sofa by the coffee table, gesticulating to the others to join him.

‘The girl was a sight I would rather not remember,’ he said, ‘if you know what I mean. I knew her, after all.’ His wife poured coffee. Assad declined, but she ignored him.

‘I’ve never seen a body so badly beat-up,’ he continued.
‘She was so small and thin. I don’t understand how she could’ve survived as long as she did.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The autopsy showed that she was alive for perhaps an hour after they left. The bleeding in her liver amassed in her abdominal cavity until her blood loss became too severe.’

‘That’s quite a risk the killers took.’

‘Not really. Had she lived, her brain would have been so damaged she would never have been able to help the investigation. That was obvious straight away.’ With the thought of this Thomasen turned his face towards the fields. Carl knew the feeling. Some inner images made you want to see beyond this world.

‘The killers knew this?’

‘Yes. An open skull fracture like that, in the middle of the forehead, leaves no doubt. It was quite extraordinary. So it was plain to see.’

‘And the boy?’

‘Well, he lay next to her. He had a surprised yet peaceful expression on his face. He was a good lad. I’d met him many times, both at home and at the station. He wanted to be an officer like his father.’ His gaze focused on Carl. It was rare to see a seasoned officer with such grief-stricken eyes.

‘Then the father arrived and saw everything?’

‘Unfortunately, yes.’ He shook his head. ‘He wanted to take the bodies with him straight away. He was in such a state he walked around the crime scene and probably ruined all kinds of evidence. We had to forcefully drag him out of the house. I truly regret that now.’

‘And then you gave the case to the Holbæk Police?’

‘No, it was taken from us.’ He nodded to his wife. There was plenty of everything on the table now. ‘Biscuit?’ he asked, but seemed as though he really wanted them to say no and just leave.

‘So it was you who put the case in our hands?’

‘No, it wasn’t.’ Thomasen sipped his coffee and glanced at Assad’s notes. ‘But I’m happy the case has been reopened now. Every time I see those bastards on the telly – Ditlev Pram, Torsten Florin and that stockbroker – I feel like rubbish the rest of the day.’

‘You’ve formed an opinion about who the perpetrators were, I see.’

‘You’re damned right.’

‘What about the man who was convicted, Bjarne Thøgersen?’

The retired officer’s foot traced circles on the parquet floor under the coffee table, but his face remained placid. ‘That damn flock of rich-folks’ kids, they were all in it together, believe me. Ditlev Pram, Torsten Florin, the stockbroker and that girl they had along. That little shit Bjarne Thøgersen was probably there, too, but they were all in on it. And Kristian Wolf, the sixth member of the gang. And he didn’t just die from some heart attack. If you want to know my theory, the others had him liquidated because he got cold feet about something or other. That was homicide, too.’

‘As far as I know,’ said Carl, ‘Kristian Wolf was killed in a hunting accident, wasn’t he? The report states he accidentally shot himself in the thigh and bled to death. None of the other hunters were in the vicinity.’

‘Bollocks. It was murder.’

‘You base that theory on, well, what?’ Assad leaned across the coffee table and snatched a biscuit, eyes focused on Thomasen.

The man shrugged. Copper’s intuition. What would Assad know about that, he was probably thinking.

‘Well,’ Assad went on, ‘do you have anything for us to look at around the Rørvig murders? Something we maybe can’t find other places?’

Klaes Thomasen pushed the plate of biscuits towards Assad. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Who might have something then?’ Assad pushed the plate back. ‘Who can help us move along here? If we don’t find out, the case will end up back in the pile.’

A surprisingly independent observation.

‘I’d get hold of Henning’s wife, Martha Jørgensen. She pestered the investigators for months after the murders and her husband’s suicide. Yes, try Martha.’

The light over the rail tracks appeared grey in the mist. On the opposite side, beyond the spider web of overhead wires, the yellow postal vans had been active for hours. People were on their way to work, and the S-trains that made Kimmie’s home shake were brimming with passengers.

It could be the start of an average day, but inside her the demons were on the loose. They were like feverish hallucinations: ominous, ungovernable and unwanted.

For a moment she sank to her knees and prayed for the voices to stay quiet, but the higher powers had the day off, as usual. So she took a long swig from the whisky she kept next to her makeshift bed.

When half the bottle had burned its way through her body, she decided to leave the suitcase behind. She had enough to carry. The hatred, the loathing, the anger.

First in line was Torsten Florin. That’s how it’d been since Kristian Wolf’s death.

This was a thought she’d had frequently.

She had seen Torsten’s fox-face in a celebrity news magazine, proudly posing in front of his newly renovated and award-winning glass palace of a fashion house at Indiakaj in the old free port. That is where she would confront him with reality.

She eased out of the ramshackle bed, her lower back
throbbing, and sniffed her armpits. The smell wasn’t pungent yet, so her bath in DGI City’s municipal swimming centre could wait.

She rubbed her knees, ran her hand under the bed, pulled out the little chest and opened the lid.

‘Did you sleep well, my little darling?’ Kimmie asked, stroking the minute head with her finger.

Every day she thought,
The hair is so soft and the eyelashes are so long
. Then she smiled warmly at her dear little one, closed the lid carefully and put the chest back. As always, it was the best moment of the day.

She riffled through the pile of clothes to find the warmest pair of tights. The mildew growing up under the tarpaper was a warning. This autumn the weather was unpredictable.

When she was done, she carefully opened the door of her brick house and stared directly out at the rail tracks. Less than two yards separated her and the S-trains, which whipped past at practically all hours of the day.

No one saw her.

So she slipped out, locking the door and buttoning her coat. She walked the twenty steps round the steel-grey transformer that the railway engineers rarely checked, along the asphalt path to a wrought-iron gate that exited on to Ingerslevsgade, and unlocked it.

Back when she could reach the railway building only by walking on the rubble alongside the fence all the way from Dybbølsbro Station – and doing it at night because she’d have been caught otherwise – it had been her greatest dream to have the key to this gate. Three or four hours of sleep were all she could get before having to vacate the
little round house. If she were spotted even once, she knew they would throw her out and make sure she didn’t come back. So the night became her companion until the morning she discovered the
LØGSTRUP FENCE
sign on the gate.

She called the factory and introduced herself as Lily Carstensen, the Danish State Railway’s supplies manager, and arranged to meet the locksmith at the gate. For the occasion she wore a newly pressed blue trouser suit and could have passed for middle management in the state bureaucracy. She had two copies of the keys made and got a bill – which she paid in cash – and now she could come and go as she pleased. If she took precautions, and the demons left her alone, everything would be OK.