The House That Jack Built (4 page)

Chapter 8

C
openhagen Police Headquarters.
Broad, powerful, impregnable.

Overhead, soft clouds drifted across the blue abyss. Lars nodded to the gatekeeper and entered the labyrinth of corridors and stairwells. As a young officer in the Emergency Response Squad, it had been his duty to check that the windows and doors in the entire building were shut before he left. He got lost on more than one occasion and had to look at the surrounding streets in order to regain his bearings. But at least now he knew every crevice in the entire building.

He poked his head into the claustrophobic office that Kim A shared with Frank.

“Can you guys come into my office? Grab Lisa too.” He disappeared before they had a chance to answer. As always, Kim A looked right through him.

Toke was already sitting in his office when Lars stepped inside. He got up from the corner of Lars's desk a little too quickly, holding a copy of Stine Bang's chart.

“Well, it's about time,” Toke said. “We've been waiting for you all morning.”

Lars didn't answer. He hung his jacket over the back of the desk chair. He had been by Baresso Coffee at the corner of Skoubogade and Strøget, where Stine's friend Astrid worked. The previous evening, Stine, Astrid, and a third friend, Maya, had drinks at Stine's house. Later they cycled to Ristorante Italiano on Fiolstræde — near Jorcks Passage — and ended up at Penthouse nightclub on Nørregade.

Toke sat down, crossed his legs. “How's it going with the apartment?”

“Good, thanks.” Lars sat down, rubbing his face with both hands. “I just have to get settled in. Say hi to your brother-in-law and thank —”

The door opened. Kim A and Frank walked in without knocking. The office suddenly seemed crowded.

“Lisa's on her way,” Frank said, then sat down on the windowsill. Kim A positioned his more than 225-pound frame in the middle of the room. His fleshy cheeks quivered when he talked. Lars ignored him.

“I assume you've all been briefed on the case?” Lars pulled out a cigarette but he didn't light it. He just needed to have something in his hands. “I've been to see the victim, Stine Bang.”

Toke raised his hand. Lars nodded and Toke slid a photo onto the table.

Everyone leaned over Lars's desk, studied the printout of the photo. Stine was lying on a stretcher in the corridor at Rigshospitalet, clearly unconscious. Christine Fogh was bent over her. Stine was naked, although someone had covered her groin with a towel. Even in the grainy photo, the jumble of dark stains and wounds that covered her frail body was clearly visible. Her face was almost lost behind layers of congealed blood. Her nose was crooked, her eyes shut. Even if she'd wanted to, she wouldn't have been able to open them.

A quick knock and the door opened. Lisa Bak entered. She was small and nimble with big brown eyes and short, dark-blonde, spiky hair.

“What's up?” She smiled at Frank. Toke made room for her by the desk.

Lisa glanced at the picture; her smile disappeared. “What a fucking psychopath.”

No one contradicted her.

“You haven't spoken with the victim?” Frank's freckled face was almost transparent in the backlighting.

Lars shook his head, told them about his meeting with Christine Fogh, and then recounted Astrid's statement. A guy had been all over Stine on the dance floor, then had followed her to the bathroom. He was about a head taller than Stine, and had light brown, curly hair. Astrid couldn't remember what colour his eyes were.

Lisa moved to the door and rested her back against it as he spoke. The others returned to their previous positions. Everyone avoided looking at the photograph.

Lars cleared his throat. “This guy that Astrid mentioned, we need to find him.”

Everyone in the room nodded. Lars looked at each of them in turn. “It won't be long before the media gets hold of the story. This picture . . .” He pointed at the back of the printout. “It cannot end up in the tabloids or online. She's already been raped once.”

Toke nodded, folded the picture, and returned it to his inside jacket pocket.

Lars leaned back in the chair. “Stine left Penthouse at 2:00 a.m. By bike, it isn't more than ten minutes to Øster Voldgade where she was attacked at 2:40 a.m. Stine was drunk, so let's say fifteen minutes. What happened during the intervening twenty-five minutes? Kim A, Lisa, you take Ristorante Italiano and Penthouse nightclub. Somebody had to have seen something. Frank and Toke, you speak to the cab drivers. There are a lot of cabs driving down Øster Voldgade at that time of night.”

“Ristorante Italiano?” Kim A was already writing the name down on his pad.

The meeting wrapped up. After the detectives left his office, Lars leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head. He needed a smoke.

He sat up with a start and reached for his cell phone.

“Christine Fogh? This is Lars Winkler, Homicide Department. We spoke earlier about Stine Bang?”

“I remember you, officer.” Her voice was a touch deeper than it had been earlier that morning.

“Is there any change in Stine's condition?”

“No, we're keeping her asleep.”

“One question. Can you tell me how tall Stine is?”

He heard paper rustling.

“I don't seem to have that information here. I'll call you right back.”

Lars was walking in haphazard figure eights between the pillars of the colonnaded courtyard of the police station. Halfway through the cigarette, his phone rang.

“Elena.” His ex-wife.

“Welcome back, Lars.” She hesitated. “Did you have — did you enjoy your vacation?”

“Hmm.” He took a long drag on the cigarette. The ember was now perilously close to his lips. The stench of burnt stubble stung his nose. He started coughing.

“Are you sick?”

“No, no,” he assured her. “What did you want?”

“Have you sorted out the apartment?”

“Yes, I've just —”

“Listen, can you come by the boutique tomorrow? Let's say eleven o'clock?”

“That's not a good time. I'm in the middle of something.”

“Lars, you know very well I can't leave the store.” Honey and steel in her voice. “You've got Maria tomorrow, for the next two weeks. You haven't forgotten, have you?”

“Fine, fine, I'll try to be there. But —”

A bell chimed in the background.

“I have to run,” she said. “Remember, tomorrow at eleven.”

As usual, she got things her way. He put out his cigarette, and as he was making his way back through the building, Christine called.

“Five foot six.”

“And her heels?”

“Two inches exactly.”

“So he was about eight inches taller than her.” Lars held the phone between his jaw and shoulder, noted down
5'8"
and
5'6" + 2"
on his hand. “Thank you.”

4 Folmer Bendtsens Plads, a corner store on the ground floor, or more accurately, a SUPER CORN RSTORE, if you believed the sign above the door. Lars was looking despondently at the red boards above the storefront, the dimly lit space behind them, and the cases of factory flowers outside. Toilet paper and juice cartons were stacked in one window; the other had an ad for Jolly Cola and Jolly Lime. The place hadn't seen an interior decorator for years.

So this was where he'd be buying his King's from now on? The occasional newspaper?

A moped shot past. The slipstream made his jacket flutter. Someone shouted at the driver.

He stepped inside and looked behind the counter at the rows of magazines bathed in the merciless fluorescent light. The glossy covers shimmered in an extended palette of skin colours. From piggish pink to light mocha and chocolate brown.

He thought about Elena, about their phone conversation, and felt the beginnings of a bad mood. His gaze swept across the magazine covers again. He had accomplished so few of the things you were supposed to achieve in life.

“Ahem.” Someone cleared their throat from behind the counter.

Lars looked up. A chubby kid with blond hair and watery eyes was standing behind the counter. He was wearing a T-shirt and jogging pants, and couldn't be more than seventeen.

“You've gotta be the only Danish guy working in a corner store for miles.”

The boy laughed. “Most people are surprised. Still, not many have the guts to mention it. What can I get for you?” The guy turned sideways to reveal the magazine shelves behind him.

“Er, no thanks. I mean, not today . . . I —” He went quiet. “Just give me two packs of King's Blue.”

The guy placed the cigarettes on a pile of tabloids. The headline, “Political Hopeful's Secret Past as High-Class Prostitute,” was in bold print, above a less-than-flattering picture of a female politician. Lars pulled out his wallet and ran his card through the machine.

“Well, I just work here,” the guy said. “My friend's dad owns the store. He's from Iran. So you're not far off the mark.”

Lars opened a pack and gave the young man an inquiring look. The boy nodded, still smiling broadly.

“Smoke away. Someone's always smoking in here.” He gestured toward the storeroom. Languorous tones drifted out, a string instrument that Lars didn't recognize. The beaded curtains swayed gently back and forth.

He lit his King's, blew the smoke out through his nose.

“I've just moved in to number 2.” He pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “How late do you stay open?”

“Well, we usually close around midnight, seven days a week. But I only really do a few shifts a week. I've got school as well.”

Lars nodded. School was important. “Nice talking to you.”

“Welcome to the neighbourhood.”

Lars left the corner store just as an S-train thundered into the station. It was only when the whistling had died down and he was standing in front of number 2 with his keys in his hand that he registered the sound.

Maybe he was settling in here after all?

July 1944

S
he is lying
in the darkness beneath the roof with her eyes open, waiting for that which comes crawling in the night. Up the stairs and into her bed. The rafters in the old timber frame give a little. A window rattles somewhere. The darkness presses on her. There is war in the summer night, and both inside and outside, blackout. Mother and Father are sleeping below on the second floor above the consulting room.

Nothing moves in the old house. Only the rising and falling of her chest, in time with her breathing. And deep down inside her, the little life stirs. She strokes the small bump under the rough blanket that scratches her skin through her nightgown. She wants to light the kerosene lamp, read a little. But there are no blackout curtains for the small window in the roof. The latest issue of
Family Journal
waits on the nightstand. She doesn't have time to read during the day. She has so much to do. School and Father's patients. And in the evening, cooking, washing dishes, packing Father's pipe. And now there is war.

The sky is torn apart by the terrifying roar of airplane engines. A monotone thrumming warns of incoming death. She attempts to count the planes, one, three, five . . . No, there are too many today. Having dropped their cargo of death and destruction on Berlin and Hamburg and Kiel, they're flying above Gentofte on their way home. Great cities in flames, with girls like her, and women and men and children. Over there, they are burning. Over there, the blackout is over.

She waits for the small
poofs
of the anti-aircraft guns. It won't be long now.

Someone turns in the bed below, a heavy body. She pulls the blanket up under her chin.

Poof, poof
—
poof, poof, poof
. The sound is almost cute from down here. But there is also another sound. Something exploding, falling through the night sky. Screaming metal. She pulls the blanket all the way over her head, but no blanket will help tonight. The shrill screeching grows louder and louder. Then it's as though the house — no, the earth — is shaking. The crash is so tremendous, the world goes silent. Everything is completely still.

Then, little by little, the world begins to speak again.

The stairs creak, the rafters give. Somewhere outside, something is burning.

Downstairs, there's movement again. Someone is getting out of bed, getting dressed, walking down the stairs. Mother is shouting and whispering in the same breath.

“Be careful.”

A little later, she doesn't know how long, the door opens with a crash. He shouts at her to bring water and cloths. She stumbles out of bed, puts her thin coat over her nightgown, and tiptoes down the stairs in bare feet. Her mother is standing in the hallway of the second floor, her nightgown clinging to her thin frame. Further down, on the ground floor, a kerosene lamp is lit. The flickering light casts dancing shadows over the walls and doors. There are bloodstains on the floor, just inside the front entrance. She hears clattering feet, men huffing. She hurries into the kitchen, fills the large pot with water, and lights the stove. Then she runs into the consulting room, finds the drawer with the folded cloths, and pulls out a large stack. Mother is on the landing, looking down at the ground floor. Then she turns on her heel and goes back to bed.

The blood trail leads to the cellar door. She follows carefully, so as not to fall down the steep staircase. She walks through the first cellar and over to the secret door.

Now she hears them. The flickering gleam from the kerosene lamp lights the spaces between the boxes. Her father is hunched over a man in uniform. It's difficult to see in the dark, but she can see the blood covering his face, and his neck is badly burnt. One arm hangs, strangely limp.

“An English pilot,” Father says. “He's got several broken ribs. His arm might be broken too. Talk to him, Laura.”

She walks over to her father, folds her hands, and swallows. Then she produces her schoolgirl English.

“Sir?”

With her translating, Father is able to make a diagnosis. She runs upstairs to get the water that's almost boiling. As she tries to balance the large pot down the steep stairs, water splashes onto her hands. Between them, she and Father manage to pull off the man's uniform jacket and shirt. She cleans his wounds. He's beautiful, she thinks. Black hair. Grey eyes, full lips. He's in a lot of pain. But he'll pull through, Father says. They must be sure not to say anything to Mother. She shakes her head. She is good at separating things. That which Mother can know and that which Mother cannot.

She grabs some gauze and morphine and some drinking water. She makes a splint for the pilot's arm from the barrel of a gun, binds it. He groans every time the barrel bangs against his broken ribs. Then she hurries upstairs and washes the blood from the carpet and stairs. She goes outside and walks along the garden path, searching in the darkness for any traces of him. She manages to wipe away the few stains. It's starting to rain. That should get rid of whatever's left. In the thicket by the swamp, out by the lake, the airplane is smouldering. A car horn cuts through the night. The Germans are coming.

“You have to stay down here and watch over him,” Father says when she returns. He washes his hands in the spare water. All that blood on Father's hands. “I'm going up to the bedroom with your mother. I'll worry about the Germans when they get here.”

She nods, darts up to the attic to find her
Family Journal
. So she'll get to read after all. She smiles when she returns to the cellar and sees Father walking up the stairs. He closes the secret door behind him.

Later, she hears knocking upstairs. Heavy blows that make the house groan. She's absorbed in her magazine; she doesn't react. Not even to the angry voices that follow shortly after.

Next to her, the pilot's wheezing measures the hours until morning.