The Forgotten Girls Page 15

  “Frederik seems to think that there are certain rules I have to abide by if we’re to keep living at the manor house.”

  Camilla topped off both of their glasses and grabbed a piece of bread.

  “It’s not like I don’t know how to behave,” she said with hurt in her voice. “It’s one thing that he got mad about me firing the workers. But they weren’t keeping to our agreement! And isn’t a minister supposed to marry people the way he promised?”

  She put a piece of bread in her mouth and chewed angrily.

  “I’m running around to all these lame-ass things,” she went on. “The other day, I was squeezed into a corner at some charity auction and could barely stand up when it finally ended because my legs were asleep from boredom. But nobody took any notice.”

  “Maybe that’s not what he meant,” Louise suggested. “Maybe he just doesn’t need any more problems.”

  “Problems?” Camilla asked uncomprehendingly. “He doesn’t have any damn problems. I end up with all of them!”

  “If given a choice, don’t you think he would have preferred you and Markus moving to Santa Barbara so he could continue his life over there?” Louise asked.

  Camilla shrugged.

  “Instead of working his ass off in a family company that he never had any desire to run?”

  She fell silent when her friend cast down her eyes.

  “Enough about him,” Camilla said and told Louise about her visit to the patient care assistant who’d worked at Eliselund. “It was boiling water that ruined her face. Her skin was scalded off. It’s unbearable to think of. And Agnete Eskildsen was the one who turned on the tap.”

  Louise breathed in and exhaled heavily.

  “She told me that the supervisor down there told the twins’ father a story that it was the girl’s sister who had been careless with a kettle of boiling water, but she also said that it was solely to protect the reputation of the institution and not to cover up for her.”

  “Then it’s no wonder she reacted when she saw the photo in the newspaper,” Louise said.

  Camilla nodded and added that Agnete had told her that the twins were inseparable. “I can barely stand to think where Mette might be now,” Camilla exclaimed. “Or what’s become of her.”

  “Did Agnete have any idea about how something like this could have happened?”

  “She hasn’t been keeping up with what’s been going on down there. The director retired and someone new replaced him, but as she said when I was leaving, she turned her back on Eliselund after the accident.”

  The phone rang in the living room, and Louise got up to answer it. These days, just about the only people who called her home number were her parents and Melvin.

  “Why don’t you come out here to the gardens for a cup of evening coffee?” Melvin asked when he found out that Camilla was visiting.

  “I don’t think either one of us is in any condition to drive,” Louise admitted, although the idea of sitting in the small garden and letting go of all her thoughts about the case did hold a certain appeal.

  “That’s too bad. There’s something I want to show you.” He told her that a garden lot would be going up for sale just a few houses down on the same path as Grete’s friend’s place. “It’s going to be any day now.”

  “Well, you should buy it!” Louise exclaimed. “Let’s buy it together.”

  She could just picture it: Melvin puttering around an herb garden, digging up new potatoes; her in a hammock while Jonas was cultivating all his new friendships.

  “Yes, I’m in,” she announced rather giddily just as Melvin added that it couldn’t hurt to take a look since he got an inside tip before it really went on the market.

  “Wouldn’t it be nice to just move out and live in a small house in the community gardens, and not have to deal with work and annoying colleagues?” Louise said when she returned to the kitchen, where Camilla had cleared the table and opened up another bottle of wine even though it was already getting late.

  “That would probably be kind of a bummer,” her friend interjected. “Don’t they turn off the water and you’re not even supposed to live out there in the winter?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Louise hadn’t considered the obligations that went with the idea, but she supposed that Melvin would be the one to take care of those things.

  “I thought it sounded like you weren’t liking your new department so much. Are you having second thoughts?” Camilla asked, opening a sleeve of crackers for the cheese.

  Louise stared straight ahead for a second. Was she having second thoughts? Perhaps a little. She was still quite appalled that Rønholt had stabbed them in the back and almost forced them to close the case.

  “If he had gotten away with making us close the case about Lisemette, I would have had to put my job on the line for it. I can’t just sit around a place where it’s all about processing case numbers through the system in order to achieve an impressive percentage of solved ones.”

  “What about that guy you’re working with?” Camilla asked, looking at her curiously.

  Louise laughed wearily. “Eik Nordstrøm. On our first day I had to go scoop him up from some dive bar in Sydhavnen. He’s a chain smoker who listens to Nick Cave and only wears black.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better for you to bring Lars Jørgensen over?”

  They had finished the last bottle, and Louise gratefully left the cleanup to Camilla to get ready for bed.

  “No,” she said to her own surprise before going to brush her teeth. “I kind of like that he’s straightforward. He doesn’t do a lot of bullshit and he backed me up when Rønholt was trying to screw us over. It’s more Hanne who’s being a cow. Eik is all right.”

  25

  WHAT THE HELL are you doing?” Louise yelled when she walked into the office the next morning, her head heavy, and spotted two of the case files from the archives in Roskilde on Eik’s desk.

  “It’s just the ones we didn’t finish in Holbæk,” he answered innocently.

  “You can’t just remove the case files! That’s Mik’s case! How do you plan to explain that you took them?”

  “Calm down,” he grumbled, straightening up as he opened the top file. “I’ll send them back as soon as we’re done with them.”

  “You’re not sending them back,” Louise cut in, pointing to the phone. “You’re going to call up Mik and explain to him that the files are on your desk.”

  Just then Louise’s cell phone started ringing, and she was about to toss it in the drawer when she noticed that it was Melvin. For a second she started to worry. It wasn’t like him to call her during her working hours.

  “Yes,” she answered briefly, turning her back to Eik, who was laying out the old cases across his desk. She pulled out her chair and sat down while her downstairs neighbor informed her that he had just gone to put them down for the community garden lot.

  “The house on there isn’t very big,” he said and generously offered to take the smaller room out back so she and Jonas could have the bedroom and the part of the living room that was screened off behind the kitchen. “There’s room for an extra bed.”

  So all three of them in 375 square feet, Louise thought, starting to regret having let herself get carried away in her red wine buzz. She had to backpedal but really didn’t feel up to it right now. He sounded so happy.

  “Let’s talk about it tonight,” she said quickly and promised to stop by downstairs after she got home.

  “I also found the case files for the two women who went missing that same summer. Check out what one of Lotte Svendsen’s girlfriends said in her deposition,” Eik said as soon as she put down her phone. “ ‘We had been hanging out all day. It was the Whitsun celebration so most of us met up early for the community breakfast down on Main Street.’ ”

  “Give me that; I want to read it myself,” she said irritably, reaching for the old report.

  “ ‘Several of us went home to sleep for a while before mee
ting back up in the evening for the party in the tent. Then we rode our bikes out to Avnsø Lake and kept partying. I don’t remember if Lotte went swimming, too, but she wanted to leave before the rest of us. Ole had started messing around with Helle, and so Lotte got mad and went to get her bike,’ ” she read out.

  After skimming over the rest of the case, she determined that the deposition from Lotte Svendsen’s girlfriend was the most interesting one. The other people who were interviewed hadn’t even noticed that Lotte Svendsen left early to go home.

  Nobody had seen her after she left the party in the woods, and it was several days before a forest worker found her bike between the trees a few hundred yards from there. No attempt had been made to hide it; it was just left there, Louise noted, which suggested to the police that she had parked it there voluntarily.

  If she had been attacked that close to the others, it seemed most unlikely that nobody would have heard her calling for help. According to most of the people who had been interviewed, it was no secret that Lotte Svendsen had been deeply in love with Ole Thomsen for several years—ever since they left school, in fact, but things never really happened between the two of them. At the time, several people explained that they initially thought her disappearance might have something to do with that.

  Big Thomsen had been interviewed as well but according to his deposition, he hadn’t even noticed her being at the lake that evening.

  What a jerk, Louise thought. That’s exactly how she remembered that crowd: arrogant and indifferent.

  “Would it be worth it to talk to the people who used to hang out in the woods back then?” Eik suggested, looking at her questioningly.

  “Maybe,” she replied, “but I think we should start by focusing on finding the consultant doctor and some of the others who worked at Eliselund back then so we can get an explanation for those death certificates.” She told him about Camilla’s visit to Agnete Eskildsen. “I don’t like thinking about the fact that the rapist might have a connection to Mette.”

  Louise tipped her chin toward the phone on his desk. “You get the information on the employees,” she said, “and I’ll drive to Holbæk and return the two case files that you stole.”

  “You don’t have to drive there; we’ll just send them in the mail,” he objected. “They don’t even know that they’re missing.”

  “I don’t want to risk them getting lost in the mail,” she declared. “I’m going.”

  She was quite happy to get away from the Rathole and from Eik, who had put the phone in his lap, tipped his chair back, and flung his boots up on the desk while punching in the number for Eliselund.

  “February 1980,” he repeated, and listened while nodding.

  Louise was holding the case files, her bag on her shoulder, and couldn’t help but smile. She had immediately picked up that Eik had Lillian Johansen—the cranky sourpuss—on the line.

  “I just need to know who worked at Eliselund at the time,” he continued in a deep and patient voice while shaking a cigarette from the pack with his free hand and lighting it, unconcerned with the fact that Louise was still standing in the doorway.

  WHEN SHE GOT to Holbæk, Louise left the case files with the front office for the criminal police with instructions that they were to be brought to Mik’s office right away. Then she slunk away before she risked running into anyone she knew. On her way back to the car, Viggo Andersen called and told her that he now intended to look for the doctor who signed the death certificates.

  “I’m going to get ahold of the Division for the Care of the Mentally Retarded,” he said with an air of commitment. He was showing his girls all the attention that had been withheld from them back then.

  “We’re already working on finding the persons responsible. Why don’t we agree that I’ll contact you once we get some names?” Louise said. She understood that he felt the need to act, but he would have to wait until they had had a chance to speak with those involved. Instead she suggested that he have a talk with Agnete Eskildsen, who used to work there when the girls were little. “Did you or your family have any acquaintances in the Hvalsø area? Someone who would have known the girls when they were little and knew that they grew up at Eliselund?”

  A considerable amount of time passed while he pondered her question, but he finally arrived at the conclusion that they didn’t.

  “I was too busy working and looking after the girls to have much of a social circle,” he added. “And they were mostly in their own little world and then they were just three years old when they moved away.”

  “No big deal, it was just a thought anyway,” Louise hurried to say. “You’ll hear from me after we speak with some of the old employees from Eliselund.”

  WHEN LOUISE REACHED the freeway exit to Hvalsø, she decided to stop by her parents’ place to see if Jonas wanted to come home. She drove down the underpass and was about to take the back way around town out of habit, but then she stopped herself and continued down Main Street instead. When she reached the church, she signaled off and turned into the small parking lot. There were no other cars. She got out of the car and walked through the gate. Keeping up her pace, she continued down the path past the church and around the corner to the cemetery in the back. The cemetery was deserted aside from an older man who was watering the graves that faced out toward the inn.

  She smelled the freshly cut grass from the lawn surrounding the unmarked graves. She proceeded slowly toward the rearmost paths, where she began reading the names on the headstones, an oppressive feeling growing in her chest. None of these people had died recently.

  Twenty-one years had passed. Klaus was buried on September 7, 1990. It was a Friday. Louise remembered because it was exactly one week after they moved into the house. She paused for a moment to gather up courage before continuing to the rearmost path, which ran along the cemetery wall.

  His grave was the third one in. The name was cut into black slate, and there was a small heart underneath.

  That heart should have been from me, Louise thought sadly and squatted down.

  She looked at the two small cemetery vases with fresh flowers. Everything was tidy and neat without being overly groomed, but he wouldn’t have cared for that anyway. Her eyes rested on the wildflowers sown in a cluster and the two evergreen shrubs that gave his little plot a lush appearance.

  Someone must come here often since the grave is so neat, she thought, reaching out to touch the fresh flowers in the vases. The leaves were still crisp. Louise let her hand linger for a moment on the stem of the flower while her thoughts traveled back, and she startled when her cell phone started ringing in her pocket.

  “There’s been another rape,” Mik started without presenting himself. “The woman’s husband found her when he came home and called an ambulance. They took her to Roskilde.”

  Louise stood up in a daze.

  “Is she alive?”

  “Yes, and it doesn’t seem like she’s been subjected to the same aggravated violence as we’ve seen in connection with the murder of the child care provider,” he said, adding that he hadn’t personally had a chance to speak with the victim.

  “But could it be the same perpetrator?”

  “Without a doubt,” Mik answered.

  “What do you know?”

  “We know that the rapist entered the woman’s home through an open patio door while she was in the bathroom.”

  “Where does she live?” Louise asked, feeling a jitter through her body.

  “The postal code is for Hvalsø, but according to her husband, the house is inside the woods a ways,” he explained. “The house has some name or other; I’ve got it written down somewhere. Here it is: Starling House.”

  “Starling House, huh?” Louise remembered it, and the large patio she had seen from the forest road.

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Has the victim said anything?” she asked.

  “Not yet. I’ve got pretty much all my people out in the area so I’ll have
to recall one of the female officers before we can go to Roskilde to interview her,” he answered. They were both well aware that the interview would be more productive with a female interviewer.

  “I can go talk to her,” Louise quickly suggested but then fell silent when it occurred to her that it may not be the best idea. She might not be able to go through with the interview if the rape victim turned out to be someone she knew.

  “You got time?” he asked, jumping at her offer. “For now, all we need to know is whether she can describe the rapist.”

  “I’ll talk to her.” Louise made a quick decision and thought of Mette. Right now, even the smallest lead was a potential step toward finding her. She told him that she was in Hvalsø. “I can get there faster than you guys anyway.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll drive out to the house with the forensic officers then. I’ll let them know that you’re on your way.”

  Louise got in the car and threw a last glance at the cemetery, thinking that it hadn’t been quite as hard as she had imagined.

  She should have done it years ago.

  26

  WHEN SHE ARRIVED at the hospital, Louise was shown into an office next to the examination room where the woman was. She put her bag down on the floor and took off her jacket.

  “How’s she doing?” she asked before the nurse left. “Is it bad?”

  The redheaded nurse turned around in the doorway and shrugged. “It’s mostly the shock. Her injuries are superficial. But it was consummated rape and it was pretty rough,” she answered, adding that the woman had locked herself in the bathroom when her husband returned home from work.

  “She’s barely said anything so you’ll probably have to go a bit easy on her.”

  Louise nodded.

  “Is anyone with her?”

  “Her husband just left to go pick up their daughter. I found some clothes for her and he said he’ll be back to pick her up after he drops off the girl with her grandparents. But go on in there,” she said, following Louise into the examination room.