The Forgotten Girls Page 12

  “Forgotten girls?” Camilla repeated.

  Agnete Eskildsen nodded. “They had no contact with their family or anyone else from the outside. That’s how the system worked back then. You weeded out the ones who were defective and hid them away. Visitors were a rare occurrence,” she recalled. Several of the mothers were not allowed to visit their children, she went on, because their husbands were annoyed that they would be upset afterward.

  “The children?” Camilla asked.

  “No, the wives,” she quickly replied. “The visit would leave them so distraught that they forbade them from going. So many of the children never had visitors, and yet they stood faithfully by the gate, waiting for someone to come. It was quite heartrending.”

  “That sounds crazy,” Camilla said, shaking her head. “But after the accident when Lise was being treated for her wounds, the two sisters couldn’t have stayed together?”

  Camilla noticed the expression on the woman’s face shifting to something like animosity. It took her by surprise that the night nurse remembered so many details from that time.

  “Yes, they stayed together,” Agnete Eskildsen finally said. “But that was also the reason they couldn’t send her to be treated at the hospital—because they wouldn’t allow the sister to come along. So she stayed at Eliselund, and our own consultant doctor treated her even though it wasn’t his specialty.”

  Agnete Eskildsen fell silent for a moment before she added that an extra bed was placed in the sickroom for the sister.

  “I imagine they decided that her presence wasn’t important since she was feebleminded anyway,” she added quietly after a little while.

  “But the accident,” Camilla said. “What happened?”

  “It was just that—an accident.” Agnete Eskildsen sighed and looked sadly out the window. “A really bad, no-fault accident.”

  “How was it no-fault?” Camilla asked.

  Agnete Eskildsen folded her hands on the oilcloth in front of her and picked at a fingernail before she reluctantly started to recount the incident.

  “We always had to turn up the water heater in the basement the day before the weekly bath day to allow time for the water to heat up. But that day, the thermostat was broken, and that’s when it happened.”

  She looked down at the striped oilcloth.

  “The girl was already in the tub when the shower with boiling-hot water got turned on, and her screams carried throughout the large building.”

  Agnete Eskildsen closed her eyes and stayed that way as she went on: “It was me who turned on the water,” she whispered despairingly, “and I’ll never forget her scream. I wake up at night because it tears through my dreams. The skin on her face and down across her shoulder was stripped clear off before we could react, and afterward she wouldn’t let us touch her. She just lay in the bottom of the tub, burning pink, screaming until the consultant doctor came and gave her an injection.”

  Camilla had put her pencil down. Now she just sat there in shock, listening.

  “We hustled everyone out of the bathroom. It wasn’t a pretty sight of course,” Agnete Eskildsen continued after a pause. “They had all been lined up and ready, naked as the day.”

  They both sat in silence, the picture all too clear.

  “It was a difficult time afterward,” she acknowledged. “Back then we didn’t talk about it much when things like that happened. At first I tried to forget but now I’ve long come to terms with the image of that terrible wound to her face.

  “I only stayed till the end of the month. Then I quit and I haven’t used my caretaker training since.”

  “So you don’t know what became of the two sisters?” Camilla asked after a minute, picking her pencil back up.

  Agnete Eskildsen shook her head. “I have no idea. But you can imagine that it brought up a lot of memories when I suddenly saw her picture in the paper.”

  Camilla nodded sympathetically.

  “The last time I saw Lisemette was when they lifted her little body out of the tub. I wasn’t even allowed to visit her in the sick ward, even though I’d bought chocolates for both of them.”

  It got quiet again, but this time the silence held so much sadness that Camilla felt that she had to get up and let the woman off.

  “I put Eliselund behind me,” Agnete Eskildsen said as they were standing in the courtyard after Camilla put her purse in the car. “Mr. Nørskov, who was head of the place, retired a few years later, and I’m not shy to admit that I wasn’t one to send flowers to his farewell reception after the way he treated me—even though it was the janitor who hadn’t serviced the water heater properly.”

  She fell silent and thought for a moment.

  “Toward the end, Parkov was in charge, but I never met her. All I can say for certain about the twin sisters is that they would have, without a doubt, stuck together if at all possible.”

  HER WORDS STAYED with Camilla as she headed back toward Roskilde. If both sisters were alive when the death certificates were issued, then they must have stayed together. And if Mette was still alive when her sister fell down the slope last week, then where was she now? And how was she managing without her sister?

  Camilla’s thoughts were mingling too fast for her to keep them all straight. She pulled over, got her iPhone from her purse, and turned on the voice recorder to make sure she wouldn’t forget the things that needed further investigation when she got back home. It occurred to her that she hadn’t given one thought to Frederik or their wedding plans since the moment she had sat down at Agnete Eskildsen’s oilcloth-covered table.

  20

  THE SMALL COMMUNITY gardens were so tightly spaced that it was practically like having dinner with the neighbors, Louise thought as she got up to clear the patio table. She had to concede, though, that Grete Milling’s friend’s small, black-painted wooden alcove and the garden had a calming effect on her. She still felt guilty about playing hooky from work and ditching on Jonas, even though he hadn’t noticed. She was shocked to discover that the past continued to have such a hold on her.

  She put the salad bowl on top of the stack of plates and carried everything into the small kitchen area behind the living room.

  Melvin was making coffee the old-fashioned way on the stove, and the two older ladies were rinsing the dishes. Everything was a bit too tight but sufficiently relaxed that it wasn’t really an issue, Louise noted, suddenly enjoying having people around to drown out the silence that had overcome her since she fled the cemetery. On her way home in the car, she had felt so empty and ashamed that she couldn’t even manage to put some flowers on Klaus’s grave.

  “You’ll have to remind me if you take sugar?” Grete said, looking at her questioningly.

  Louise shook her head and replied that just milk would do fine.

  She hadn’t mentioned her visit to Hvalsø. When Melvin asked if they wanted to go to the community gardens for dinner, all she wanted to do was get back into her bed and pull the covers over her head. But Jonas wanted to go; he’d been there a couple of times and loved it. So, to make her son happy, and keep herself even, Louise decided to join in. Jonas took off right after dinner to see some friends he’d made there the last time.

  Melvin handed Louise a blanket and swatted a couple of mosquitoes off his arm. They had agreed that they could sit outside a little longer as long as they bundled up.

  “Do you think Jonas is smoking?” she asked after they sat down.

  Almost absurdly, she hoped that he would say yes because then she would have a concrete reason to focus her thoughts on something other than herself.

  Melvin shook his head and smiled. “Right now that boy has only one thing on his mind,” he said, “and that’s his music. If he were smoking, he would have been doing it with Markus the other day because that kid smokes like a chimney and has for a while.”

  Louise looked at him with astonishment. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  Her downstairs neighbor hesitated for a moment before
answering. “I think the kids should be allowed a little privacy,” he finally said. “They’re about that age when it becomes quite natural to have little secrets.”

  “But Melvin, you have to tell me when you find out stuff like that!” Louise said. For once she felt resentful of her neighbor.

  They heard Jonas and his friends approaching on the garden path, and Melvin lowered his voice.

  “Didn’t you keep any secrets from your parents when you were that age?” he asked.

  About to shake her head, Louise stopped herself. When she was fourteen, she and her friends hid Martinis in the bushes outside the community parties at the local sports center. And then hadn’t she lit up her own first cigarette down by the old gravel pit when she was in the sixth grade? As images from her years in Hvalsø flooded her mind, she stood up as if she could shake them off.

  “My advice to you is that you give the boy a little space if you want to hold on to him. If things get too suffocating, he’ll only pull away and live his own life.”

  “I’m cold,” said Jonas, who returned after saying good-bye to his friends and took a seat next to Melvin.

  Louise handed him her blanket and noted that it was getting dark already. They’d better get going. She was still shaken by Melvin’s disclosure. She would have to talk to Camilla about it, but she wanted her friend to have the chance to enjoy her wedding first.

  Melvin and Grete had promised Grete’s girlfriend to return the next day to help her paint the fence facing the path. It was Louise’s understanding that it had to be done by June 1 or you would be setting yourself up for conflict with the other garden owners. Melvin had already gotten involved with several of the other members of the garden association and had promised to come help out for the work weekend as well because the common areas needed cleaning up.

  He was completely hooked on the whole community garden life, Louise thought, watching him get up and walk over to test the soil of a small raised bed by the hedge along the neighboring lot.

  “I think I might have a temperature,” Jonas mumbled, feeling his forehead.

  Louise looked at him. She worried about him feeling anxious and sick as a reaction to her skipping work and acting depressive.

  “You’ll have to go downstairs to Melvin’s if you’re going to stay home from school tomorrow,” she said as the four of them walked to the car together.

  “Hrhhmm,” Melvin cleared his throat. “I kind of figured on borrowing a mattress in Dragør.”

  Louise smiled; she found it sweet that Melvin still had a hard time saying he planned to spend the night with Grete.

  “You know—because we’ve got an early start out in the garden tomorrow,” he tried to explain himself.

  “I can take care of myself,” Jonas cut in, and Louise thought that it might not even be something that would last until the next day after all. The boys had been running around in short sleeves, and maybe they had just gotten chilled. Maybe it was a case of nerves he could sleep off.

  21

  BUT LINGER IT did. The following morning, Jonas woke up with shiny eyes, his skin burning up with fever. Louise called Hanne to let her know that she would be late because she had to put Jonas on a train to Hvalsø, where her parents could pick him up at the station.

  “You’ll probably need to have someone else take care of that,” Hanne cut in curtly. “Attendance at the monthly managers’ meeting is mandatory, and it starts in twenty minutes—which you would have known if you had been here yesterday when I handed out the agenda.”

  Hanne raised her voice a little before playing her trump card:

  “And I personally put it on your desk.”

  “I can’t be there in twenty minutes,” Louise answered quickly, not even bothering to comment on the fact that she had not been informed about these monthly managers’ meetings, either.

  “You’ll have to pass on that message to the national commissioner yourself,” Hanne cut in. “That’s not part of my job description.”

  “Don’t even worry about it,” Louise snapped, straining to contain her anger. Right now she didn’t give a damn about Hanne or the national commissioner.

  “The meeting runs until noon and after that there’s lunch at Restaurant Posten as usual, and I already ordered for you.”

  “Then you’ll have to cancel the order or send Eik in my place,” Louise hissed and hung up. She was no longer in a hurry to get to the Rathole and decided that she would drive Jonas to Lerbjerg herself. Then he wouldn’t have to rattle around on the train with a fever.

  LOUISE HAD JUST seen off her parents and their grandson when Mik called to tell her that the Forensics Department had run the test results from the body of the child care provider through the system.

  “No match,” he sighed, sounding as tired as he had looked when they ran into each other in the woods. “So now we’ll have to go searching.”

  They had performed an autopsy on the child care provider, and the medical examiner had noted indications that she had put up a hard struggle.

  “Large tufts of her hair had been ripped from her head and she had several pronounced hematomas. It seems so brutal that it got me thinking that maybe there was more than one attacker?”

  “Did they find semen from anyone else?” she asked with interest.

  “No,” Mik admitted. “Just from one person, but I find it confusing considering the amount of violence inflicted.”

  “What about the runner; has she turned up?”

  Louise had seen neither the news nor the papers since she left the investigation in the woods. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t even spoken with Eik. She was well aware that she owed him an explanation for her absence and an apology for making him attend the meeting this morning.

  “No,” Mik exclaimed, clearly frustrated. “The forensic officers have combed her regular route and there’s indication that she was attacked a couple hundred yards before the Troll’s Oak, down by the Deep where the road turns,” he explained. “Do you know the place?”

  “Yes,” Louise mumbled, picturing the road with its steep descent and how you had to stand up and pedal hard to make it back up the hill. Tall pines lined both sides of the road, throwing the wooded area into shade. Someone must have told Mik that they called it the Deep, she thought.

  “They found her iPod down there, and bloodstains at the spot, which of course need to be checked for DNA. The ground was torn up from resisting feet,” he continued and quickly added: “The forensic officers think she may have dug her heels in and been dragged away from the road. Unfortunately, the tracks weren’t deep enough to make imprints from the shoe prints. And there’s nothing else to indicate that a crime may have occurred because no one has seen her or heard anything.”

  “Not even the people who live in Starling House?” Louise asked. “It’s not far from there.”

  Back when she lived out there, an old lady owned the small house in the middle of the woods. It wasn’t far from the gamekeeper’s house; in fact, it was right between that and Verner Post at the Snipe House. When she and her brother were kids, they used to call it the Gingerbread House. They were convinced that the old lady was a witch because she never left the house, so they imagined that she lived off the children who played in the woods.

  Later on, Louise’s father told her that the old woman suffered from sclerosis and couldn’t get around much the last several years. She used to get her groceries delivered from the store in Hvalsø. So it wasn’t that much of a mystery after all, Louise thought. By now the woman had been dead for several years and the house had been thoroughly renovated.

  There was nobody home at Starling House when she and Eik stopped by on their tour of the houses around the woods. Louise had noted that a large patio had been added in the back with an outdoor hot tub. A motorcycle was parked in an open shed, too, so clearly someone had taken over the place.

  “No,” Mik replied. “The wife out there was home and drinking coffee on the back porch when her hus
band left for work around eight, but she didn’t hear anything. But of course by then it may have already happened.”

  There was silence at the other end of the line for a moment, then he cleared his throat.

  “So in other words: We’ve got nothing. So we have to hurry up and find out whose DNA we’ve got from the blood. We just sent out a press release asking for the public’s assistance in finding any people who regularly visit the woods. Then we’ll have to see if they’ve noticed anything. It’s obviously going to scare them, but I don’t think we have a choice. As long as the perpetrator is out there, we have to do everything we can to catch him and warn others against walking around alone.”

  Louise heard his other phone ringing and barely had a chance to say good-bye before he hung up.

  She called her mother. She could easily have turned around and driven the short distance back to her parents’ three-winged farm but then she would have to go inside again and she just didn’t feel up to it.

  “Don’t go out in the woods,” she warned when her mother picked up the phone. “I don’t know what you’ve heard but it seems that there are now two victims and they have no lead on the perpetrator.”

  “Sure, but isn’t that overreacting a bit?” her mom said, a smile in her voice.

  “I don’t know about that,” Louise replied. “The police are sending out a press release warning women against walking alone in the woods. I just thought I should let you know.” She hung up, wondering why she always felt the need to sound so surly when her mother was merely trying to calm a worry.

  For a moment she closed her eyes, leaned her head back, and tried to collect herself. She needed to get out of here. The door to her past had been opened and she was unable to control her thoughts so close to where it all happened.

  She had put so much energy into denying and rejecting the parts of her past that were too painful to remember that it had never occurred to her how easily they could be roused. She considered, very objectively, what her options were for moving on. To her dismay, there were only two: She either had to hand the case over to Eik, or stuff all her feelings and get on with it. The first would be the ultimate admission of failure, and against everything she stood for. So as she reached Hvalsø and turned right at the roundabout as usual in order to avoid Main Street, Louise realized that she had only one choice.