The Forgotten Girls Read online

“Could you do me a favor and pick up Eik at Ulla’s out in Sydhavnen?” he asked. “Looks like he’s having a bit of trouble getting back into the swing of things after his vacation.”

  Louise sighed and asked for the address. She ignored Rønholt’s thanks as she entered the street name in her GPS.

  She hadn’t signed on for this. She was not some eager-to-please rookie; nor was she comfortable being asked to retrieve her drunken partner from some seedy pub.

  Number 67. Louise couldn’t find the place, only 65 and 69. Between them was a run-down closed bar, the door hidden behind rusty grating.

  Just as she started walking back to her car, a beer truck pulled up at the curb, horn honking. Louise turned to watch the driver, who had already jumped out of the driver’s cab and started lowering the wide tailgate.

  She could have sworn that the bar with the peeling Carlsberg ad in the window had been sapped of life for years, but now a stocky, heavyset woman with jet-black hair appeared in the door, struggling to unlock the two padlocks on the rusty grating.

  “Excuse me,” Louise began once the woman had removed them. “Do you know if number sixty-seven is in the backyard?”

  The woman hauled the grating inside the door, stepping aside as the truckers started hauling in boxes.

  “This is sixty-seven,” she answered, a stale smell of old smoke and spilled beer drifting out from behind her.

  “I’m here to pick up Eik Nordstrøm at Ulla’s. Do you know her?”

  The middle-aged woman looked at Louise for a moment then gestured toward the room behind her.

  “I’m Ulla. Ulla’s is my bar, and he’s in there.”

  The men were replacing the beer casks as Louise was ushered toward the back of the room, where two gaming machines hung on the wall. The carpet under her feet was sticky in several places, and full ashtrays were still sitting on the tables. Ulla was working on cleaning up after the night’s drinking.

  Nordstrøm was sprawled across four chairs that had been pushed together in a row against the wall. Someone had covered him with a small fleece blanket. He was snoring softly with his mouth open, and his greasy, longish hair covered his forehead and fell on his nose.

  “Someone’s here for you, hon,” Ulla called, placing her hand on his black leather jacket as she started to shake him.

  Louise took a few steps back, cursing Rønholt. “Never mind.”

  She was about to leave when Ulla stopped her. “Just give him two minutes and he’ll be ready.”

  Louise stood and watched as Ulla walked behind the counter and got out a shot glass and a bottle of liquor, which she brought over and put down on the table before she started shaking Eik again.

  He grunted loudly as he finally sat up with much difficulty and accepted the glass that Ulla handed him. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back, pouring the small drink down his throat and quickly accepting another.

  Then he redirected his eyes and tried to focus on Louise.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked, his voice sounding as if it were coming through an old, rusty pipe.

  “Rønholt asked me to pick you up,” she answered. “Your vacation’s over.”

  “Tell him to go to hell,” he grumbled as he lit a cigarette from a flattened pack on the table.

  Louise watched him for a moment before she turned around and left. Outside, the truckers were about to close the truck’s tailgate, and Ulla started replacing the grating.

  “Wait!” a voice jarred from inside.

  He came stumbling out into the street, blinking in the bright sunlight while he ran his hands through his hair. For a moment it looked as if he was going to lose his balance, but then he started to follow her as she walked toward the car.

  “Do I know you?” he asked, tossing his cigarette on the curb.

  Louise shook her head and introduced herself. “You were supposed to be at the Department of Forensic Medicine three hours ago, so I filled in for you.”

  She opened the passenger door and maneuvered him into the car. She had barely walked around to the other side to get in before he leaned his head back and fell asleep.

  The ride back to the Search Department was accompanied by a gentle snoring but Louise shut it out, instead focusing on the unidentified woman. There had been something vulnerable, almost childish, about the part of her face that wasn’t disfigured by the large scar. She must have been pretty once. But the question remained—when?

  LOUISE LEFT EIK Nordstrøm in the parking lot. He was still sitting in the car, eyes closed, when she slammed the door shut behind her. Then she walked to her office, keeping her eyes fixed on the grayish linoleum floor so as not to show the anger that was simmering in her head.

  She dropped her bag on the floor and closed the door. The walls were still bare but Louise noticed that venetian blinds had been installed while she was out.

  The sun shone brightly into the room so she walked over to adjust the blinds before sitting down at her desk and turning on her computer. She found the file containing résumés along with her own notes on the three people she thought would be well suited to lead the department with her while she considered if perhaps Henny Heilmann might also be a candidate.

  Her previous group leader, who had been assigned to Radio Communication, had a long career in the Homicide Department behind her. She was one of the most experienced investigators Louise knew, but perhaps she did not have what it took to return to the fold, she thought, acknowledging that Heilmann was a wild card. She would either be incredibly committed and efficient, as in the old days, or it would be hard to get her back up to speed.

  Someone pounded on the door. When it was flung open a second later Eik Nordstrøm barged in with a couple of boxes stacked on top of an office chair, which he was pushing in front of himself with one foot.

  “All right, there’s a chair in here already,” he noted and stopped in the doorway.

  “What’s going on?” Louise exclaimed, quickly gathering up her notes while noticing that he had put some water in his hair and combed it back. She was guessing that he’d had a clean T-shirt at the office and had done a quick rinse-off in the locker room.

  “I’m moving in,” he said, nodding in the direction of the empty seat on the opposite side of the window. “I always wanted a female partner.”

  Louise got up, dumbfounded.

  “You and I won’t be working directly together,” she shot back at him. “The Special Search Agency is more like a parallel unit to yours.”

  “Yes,” he agreed as he unloaded the boxes on the desk. “And that agency is going to be you and me. I was just told to pack up my things and move in here with you.”

  “Then there’s been a misunderstanding. Who told you that?”

  Eik had tossed his leather jacket on the floor and started to unpack the two boxes.

  “Rønholt. He put me on the case involving the woman from the woods.”

  Louise stared at him in disbelief.

  “Sure, but you don’t have to be in here to work on that case, right?” she tried.

  “Yeah, ’cause I’ll be working with you,” he said and coughed as if his lungs hadn’t quite gotten their day started yet.

  She stood quietly for a moment, letting his words sink in. Then she grabbed the file from the desk and pushed past him as he started to maneuver the surplus chair out again.

  “Is RØNHOLT IN THERE?” she asked when she stood in front of her boss’s secretary. Hanne Munk had also worked in the Homicide Department some years ago, but only briefly. Her big red hair, multicolored clothing, and spiritual tendencies had not exactly been Detective Superintendent Willumsen’s cup of tea, so within a few months he had managed to scare her away.

  “You can’t go in right now!” she said. “Ragner is preparing for a meeting with the national commissioner.”

  “I need to speak with him. It’ll take two minutes.” Louise continued through the front office.

  Hanne leaped up and got to the door before Louise c
ould raise her arm to knock.

  “You can’t just barge in and interrupt.” She blocked the way, giving Louise an angry stare. “And he won’t have any more time for the rest of the day. But of course you’re welcome to schedule a meeting later this week.”

  “Oh, would you stop it!” Louise said. She stayed right in Hanne’s face with no intention of giving in.

  Just then the door opened and Ragner Rønholt nearly tripped over his secretary, who was still blocking the threshold.

  “Well, hello there,” he said, grabbing Hanne’s shoulders to regain his balance while smiling at Louise. “I’m glad you were able to get Eik up and about. He’s a good guy once he gets out of vacation mode.”

  “Yeah, about that…” Louise slipped past Hanne while pulling Rønholt back into his office and closing the door behind them. “Our deal was crystal clear: I get to pick the other person who’ll work in the new department.”

  She handed her papers to him.

  “Here’s a list of the people I consider qualified.”

  As he accepted the file, Louise remembered the small notes she had made, which were meant for her eyes only, and pulled the papers back out of his hands.

  “No one ever said that you could just unload some drunk on me.”

  “Who said anything about unloading anyone?” Rønholt sounded defensive, a deep crease indented across his forehead. “Eik is my best guy, and I’m sure that the combination of the two of you could be world-class.”

  World-class? Louise was dumbfounded at both his choice of words and how effortlessly he’d dumped the colleague on her.

  “He was sleeping it off in a bar. Once he finally came around, he downed two shots before he even got on his feet. That is not world-class. Forget it. I want Lars Jørgensen. I’m sure he could be transferred over here quickly.”

  Rønholt had moved behind his desk. He looked at her. “You’re right that Eik is fighting some demons, which at times are stronger than him. But sometimes people’s weaknesses can also turn out to be their strengths,” he said. “Lars Jørgensen is a possibility. But give Eik a chance. For a start, I suggest that he and you find the woman’s identity, investigate if there are any next of kin who need to be notified, and then we’ll get this case closed.”

  It was not the reaction Louise had expected. She took a deep breath and exhaled. This wasn’t over yet.

  He looked at his watch and grabbed his coat from the rack. “I’m running a bit late. Tonight’s bridge night and I’m in charge of the cheese platter, so I won’t be able to make it back after my meeting.”

  Louise followed him out but paused by the door. Eik Nordstrøm was standing in the front office, chatting with Hanne, who was nodding and smiling at every word he said.

  “So how about we figure out the identity of our Jane Doe?” Louise asked. “If you’re not too busy?”

  She marched through the front office, well aware of the sour tone in her voice. She heard Eik whisper something in Hanne’s ear that made her giggle before he tore himself away to catch up with Louise in the hallway.

  “You want a cup of coffee?” he asked, turning to walk into the kitchen.

  “No thanks, I drink tea.” Louise stopped in surprise by the door to the Rathole. The office was transformed. It suddenly looked like someone had moved in. Maybe those music posters in snap frames weren’t exactly to her taste, but at least it looked inhabited.

  “Well, I’ll be…” she exclaimed.

  “I can chuck it all back if it bothers you,” she heard from behind her where Eik was watching her, a cup of coffee and two cheese sandwiches in hand.

  “No, it’s fine,” she answered quickly. Truth be told, she was happy to leave the decorating to someone else. It was nice to have some things in the room, but she had no personal interest in the details.

  She walked over to her desk, put her stuff down, and dropped into her chair.

  4

  I PUT A black marker on the case so the woman is now categorized as deceased in Interpol’s register,” Louise said. She looked at Eik, who was digging into his second sandwich. “But before we release the photo to the media, maybe we should send it to the police districts and to Interpol?”

  She waited, unsure of the proper procedure. The case had been transferred to the Search Department once it became apparent to the Holbæk police that they were unable to identify the woman on their own.

  “Not that it’ll do the other districts much good when we don’t have a name to put on it,” she added.

  He shook his head while he quickly finished chewing. “We’ll only be wasting time if we sit around and wait for someone to recognize her by chance. When it comes to unidentified bodies, we usually start by focusing on the area where they were found.”

  “All right,” Louise said. “It was a forest worker who found her on Thursday morning by Avnsø Lake on central Zealand. Does that ring a bell with you?” He shook his head as she rattled off locations: “Hvalsø, Skov Hastrup, Særløse, Ny Tolstrup. There’s a refugee center out there.”

  “Is it down by Køge?” he asked, shaking the crumbs off his black T-shirt.

  “No, it’s not near Køge.” She sighed. “It’s between Roskilde and Holbæk. The forest worker was cleaning up along the lakeside when he spotted her. He doesn’t know anything about the deceased and hasn’t noticed any signs of anyone living in the woods.”

  She recounted information from the autopsy but fell silent when he held up his hand to stop her. “I need a refill.” He picked up his mug and left. On his return, he asked, “Do we know if the local police searched the area around the slope where she fell?”

  “The report from the police department in Holbæk says there were clear skid marks in the wet soil at the top,” Louise confirmed. “There had been light rain overnight but they didn’t find any footprints apart from hers.”

  “Maybe she lived in the woods,” he suggested. “Could she be homeless?”

  Louise put down the brief police report as someone knocked on the door. Hanne poked her head in; the corners of her mouth turned down, and reminded Louise that she still had not put her name on her cubbyhole. “It’d be nice if things didn’t end up on my desk. They’re piling up!”

  “Did something arrive for me?” Louise asked. It could be mail forwarded from the Homicide Department. The head of the Negotiation Group had agreed Louise would be spared any new assignments while she worked on getting the new unit up and running, so she wasn’t really expecting anything.

  “There’s an invitation to the summer barbecue and the phone directory that I printed for you.”

  “And you didn’t bring it along when you were stopping by anyway?”

  “I can’t run around delivering mail to everyone in the department,” Hanne replied pointedly.

  “Oh, but you usually don’t have a problem with that,” Eik chipped in, winking at her.

  “You’re a different story,” Hanne cooed.

  Louise stared at the door for a few seconds after Hanne closed it behind her. Then she shook her head.

  “She’s not used to competition,” Eik said, leaning back in his chair to fish a wrinkled pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Hanne is the queen of the department, the one we all court.” He pulled a flattened smoke from the pack and put it in his mouth while he looked around for a light.

  “There’s no smoking in here,” Louise said as he was about to light the cigarette, having found a lighter in the desk drawer.

  He cocked a brow and eyed her for a moment before tossing the lighter back down.

  Louise put the police report on the desk.

  “As far as the lists of missing persons go,” she continued, “I only went back a month at first. But that just gave us the woman from up in northern Jutland and a young guy from Næstved. So I went back a year, but in that time there were no women within the age group. Finally I went back five years.”

  Louise had the lists from the police in a stack in front of her.

  �
��No one fits the description. The big scar would, without a doubt, be listed under distinctive features. So she’s not listed as missing.”

  Eik still dangled the cigarette from his lips and seemed restless.

  “Give me the lists and I’ll take a look at them,” he said, already on his way out the door, lighter in hand.

  “Just go smoke your damn cigarette so you can focus and we can move on,” she burst out irritably and sat down to wait.

  Seven minutes later he returned. “Send me that picture of the woman’s face, would you?”

  After examining the photograph he declared, “If she’s Danish, someone must recognize her. That scar is so striking that there’d be no mistaking it if you’d seen her before.”

  Louise nodded.

  “Do you want me to write a description and send the picture to the press? I’ve got a list of the contacts we use for missing person alerts.”

  “Please do,” she exclaimed, happy to see him finally come alive a little. She looked at the clock. “I have an appointment down in Roskilde so I’ll be leaving a bit early today.”

  She was still trying to get used to the fact that her dear friend Camilla Lind had moved into her future in-laws’ large manor house in Boserup just outside Roskilde. After his brother died and their sister left her position as chief executive of the family business, Camilla’s boyfriend, Frederik, had decided to leave the United States and move back to Denmark to take over management of Termo-Lux.

  Camilla ending up as “lady of the manor” was something Louise had not seen coming. She knew that her friend’s small apartment right by the Frederiksberg Swimming Baths was on the market, and Markus had changed schools about a month ago because Frederik Sachs-Smith had gotten him into some private school in Roskilde. It had all happened so quickly, and now they were getting married, too. Louise had stopped by a craft store to pick up more pearls for the invitations. Camilla insisted on making them herself; Louise knew how important all this was to her old friend and confidante, so she promised to bring them down after work, even though she found the whole thing to be a waste of time.

  She sighed at the thought, already weary of being dragged into the wedding preparations. It was as if her friend had gone into romantic overdrive.