The Absent One (32 page)

‘But the most important lead in the case is that we now know one or more of the gang committed assaults in addition to the murders in Rørvig. Kimmie Lassen had hidden effects that positively indicate at least four deadly attacks, and two additional plastic pockets with effects give us cause to suspect more.

‘So now we’ll try to rope in Kimmie, follow the actions of the other suspects and finish off our other assignments. Do you have anything to add to the summary?’ Then he lit his cigarette.

‘You still have the teddy bear in your pocket, I see,’ Rose said, eyes on the cigarette.

‘Right. Anything else?’

They shook their heads.

‘Good. Fire away, Rose. What did you find out?’

She watched the spiral of smoke creeping towards her.
In a moment she would begin fanning it away. ‘Not very much, and yet a fair amount.’

‘That sounds cryptic. Let’s hear it.’

‘Besides Klaes Thomasen, I’ve only been able to locate one policeman involved in the investigation. A Hans Bergstrøm, who was part of the Mobile Investigation Unit back then. Today he has another job, and anyway, he’s impossible to talk to.’ Now she fanned the smoke away.

‘There’s no one who is impossible to talk to,’ Assad interrupted. ‘He’s just angry at you because you called him a dumb shit.’ He smiled broadly when she protested. ‘Yes, Rose, I heard it.’

‘I put my hand over the phone. He didn’t hear it. It’s not my fault he didn’t want to talk. He’s made a fortune off his patents now, and I’ve also found out something else about him.’ She began blinking and fanning again.

‘And that is?’

‘He is also an old boarding-school pupil. We won’t get anything out of him.’

Carl closed his eyes and wrinkled his nose. To show solidarity was one thing, to be thick as thieves quite another. What a bloody nuisance.

‘It’s the same with the gang’s old classmates. None of them will talk to us.’

‘How many have you got in contact with? They must be scattered to the winds. And the girls might have new surnames.’

She fanned so demonstratively now that Assad inched away from her. It
did
look threatening. ‘Apart from those who live on the other side of the globe, and are getting
their beauty sleep right now, I’ve contacted almost all of them. And I think that’s enough now. They refuse to say anything, if they say anything at all. There was only one person who hinted at what they were like.’

This time Carl blew the smoke away from her. ‘I see. What did that person say?’

‘All he said was that they were a wild bunch who bent the school’s rules. They smoked hash in the woods and in the parks near the school. But he still seemed to think they were decent enough people. Listen, Carl, can’t you put that nicotine bastard away while we’re holding a meeting?’

He’d managed ten drags. That would have to do.

‘If only we could speak directly with someone from the gang, Carl,’ Assad interjected. ‘But I suppose we can’t.’

‘If we contact any of them, I think the whole case will slip through our fingers.’ He snuffed his cigarette in his coffee cup, which clearly irritated Rose. ‘No, we’ll wait to talk to them. But what do you have for us, Assad? I understand you’ve looked into Johan’s list. Have you come to any conclusions?’

Assad raised his dark eyebrows. He had something – that was plain to see. And he’d had the distinct pleasure of keeping it to himself.

‘Out with it, teacher’s pet,’ Rose said, winking at him with coal-black eyelashes.

He glanced down at his notes with a curling smile. ‘Yes, I’ve then found the woman who was assaulted in Nyborg on 13 September 1987. Her name is Grete Sonne, and she is fifty-two. She owns a clothing shop down on Vestergade. Mrs Kingsize, it’s called. I haven’t talked to her
because I thought it was best if we went in person. I have the police report here. There’s not much in it about the assault that we didn’t already know.’

But enough, to judge by his facial expression.

‘The woman was thirty-two at the time and had been on the beach at Nyborg walking her dog on that autumn day. The dog had got off its lead and was running towards a treatment centre for diabetic children, a place called Skaerven. So she ran as fast as she could to catch it. The dog was a bit snappish, from what I can tell. Then there were some kids who caught up with it before she did, and approached her with the dog. There were five or six of them in all. She couldn’t remember any more than that.’

‘Ugh!’ said Rose. ‘Then it must have been a really heavy battering.’

Yes
, Carl thought.
Either that or the woman had lost her memory for another reason
.

‘It was quite a brutal assault, all right. The report said she had been whipped on her bare skin, several of her fingers had been broken, and the dog was left dead at her side. There were plenty of footprints, but overall the clues led nowhere. There was talk that a medium-sized red car had been parked down in Sommerbyen, outside a brown summer cottage close to the water.’ Again Assad glanced down at his notes. ‘Number 50, it was. The car was parked there for a few hours. Some motorists also reported seeing a number of youths running alongside the road around the time of the assault.

‘Afterwards ferry routes and ticket sales were checked, of course, but that didn’t lead anywhere, either.’

He shrugged his shoulders regretfully, as if he had been the one leading the investigation.

‘And then, after a four-month stay in the psychiatric ward at the university hospital in Odense, Grete Sonne was released and the case was shelved as unsolved. That was that!’ He flashed a beautiful smile.

Carl put his head between his hands. ‘Well investigated, Assad, but honestly, what do you think is so special about all this?’

Again he shrugged. ‘That I have found her then. And that we can be there in twenty minutes. The shops haven’t closed yet.’

Mrs Kingsize was downtown, sixty yards from Strøget, and was very much a clothes shop with a specific aim. Here even the most shapeless woman was able to order flattering, figure-hugging, bespoke gowns in silk, taffeta and other expensive fabrics.

Grete Sonne was the only one in the boutique with a normal shape. A natural redhead with a little added gleam, she appeared quite lithe and elegant against the shop’s imposing backdrop.

She did a double take as they glided in. She had probably sparred with many drag queens and transvestites of a certain build, but this average-sized man and his little, thickset but not corpulent sidekick didn’t fit that category.

‘Yes?’ she said, glancing at the clock. ‘We’re just about to close, but if I can help you, I’ll stay on a bit.’

Carl positioned himself between two rows of sumptuousness on hangers. ‘We’d rather wait until you close, if that’s OK with you. We have a few questions.’

She looked at his badge when he held it up for her, then grew very serious, as if the flashbacks were always waiting on the firing ramp. ‘Well, then I’ll close up,’ she said, giving her two plump assistants some instructions for the following Monday and a ‘have a good weekend’ on their way out.

‘I’m going to Flensburg on Monday, you see, to do some buying, so …’ She attempted a smile, fearing the worst.

‘We apologize for not calling ahead, but that’s partly because it’s an urgent matter, and partly because we only have a few questions.’

‘If this is about the shoplifting in the neighbourhood, you should talk to the shopkeepers down on Lars Bjørnsstræde. I’m sure they have their fingers on the pulse more than I do,’ she said, knowing this was about something else.

‘Please listen. I realize the assault you suffered twenty years ago has been hard on you, and that you probably don’t have anything to add. So all you have to do is answer “yes” or “no” to the questions we ask. Is that OK with you?’

She grew pale, but remained on her feet.

‘Just nod or shake your head,’ Carl continued when she didn’t respond. He looked at Assad. He already had his notebook and dictaphone out.

‘You didn’t remember anything about the assault afterwards. Is that still the case today?’

After a short but endless pause, she nodded. Assad noted the movement by whispering into his dictaphone.

‘I believe we know who did it. It was six youths from a
boarding school in Zealand. Can you confirm there were six attackers, Grete?’

She didn’t react.

‘Five young men and a girl. Eighteen to twenty years old. Well dressed, I think. I’m going to show you a picture of the girl.’

He showed her a copy of the photo in
Gossip
from 1996, where Kimmie Lassen stood in front of a café with Wolf and Pram.

‘It was taken a few years later, and the fashion is a little different, but …’ He observed Grete Sonne. She wasn’t paying attention at all. Simply staring at the photo, her eyes flitting between the young jet-setters on a bender in Copenhagen’s nightlife.

‘I don’t remember anything, and I don’t want to think about that business any more,’ she finally said, composed. ‘I would be very grateful if you’d leave me in peace.’

Assad stepped towards her. ‘I’ve seen in your old tax returns that you very suddenly then came into money in the autumn of 1987. You had been employed at the dairy in …’ Assad glanced at his notebook ‘… in Hesselager, it’s called. And then some money came. Seventy-five thousand kroner, isn’t that right? And then you started your first boutique in Odense, and then here in Copenhagen.’

Carl felt his surprise raise one of his eyebrows. How the hell had Assad found that out? And on a Saturday, too? Why hadn’t he mentioned it on the way over? There had been time enough.

‘Can you explain where that money came from, Grete Sonne?’ Carl asked, pointing the eyebrow at her.

‘I …’ She seemed to be searching for her old
explanation, but the magazine photo was stuck in her head and had short-circuited her inner wiring.

‘How the devil did you know about that money, Assad?’ he said as they walked down the street. ‘You didn’t have a chance to examine old tax returns today, did you?’

‘No. I just thought about a saying my father made up: “If you want to know what the camel stole from your kitchen yesterday, then you shouldn’t slit open its stomach. You should stare into its arsehole.” ’ He smiled broadly.

Carl had to chew on that one. ‘Which means … ?’

‘Why make something more difficult than it is then? I just googled whether there was a person in Nyborg called Sonne.’

‘And then you phoned someone and asked them to spill the beans on Grete’s financial situation?’

‘No, Carl. You don’t understand the saying. You’ve got to kind of go behind the story, right?’

He still didn’t get it.

‘Really, Carl! First I called the people who lived
beside
the family named Sonne. What was the worst that could happen? That it was the wrong Sonne family? Or that the neighbour was new?’ He spread out his hands. ‘Honestly, Carl.’

‘And you got the actual Sonne’s actual old neighbour?’

‘Yes! Well, not right away, but they lived in a flat, so there were also five other numbers to choose between.’

‘And?’

‘Yes, so I got Mrs Balder on the third floor. She said she’d lived there for forty years and knew Grete back when she wore plushed skirts.’

‘Pleated, Assad. Pleated. Then what?’

‘Well, the lady told me everything. That the girl had been lucky to get money from an anonymous rich man from Funen who felt sorry for her. Seventy-five thousand kroner. It was just enough to start the shop she wanted. Then Mrs Balder was glad. Everyone in the building was, she said. Because it had been such a shame for Grete with the assault.’

‘OK. Well done, Assad.’

This, Carl could see, was actually a new and important aspect to the investigation.

When the gang mistreated their victims, there were two possible outcomes: compliant victims like Grete Sonne – who had been permanently frightened out of her wits and scarred for life – they bought off. Uncooperative victims got nothing.

They simply vanished.

Carl munched on the pastry that Rose had plonked on his desk. The large-screen TV was showing a news story about the military regime in Burma; the monks’ dark crimson robes seemed to be having the same effect as a toreador’s red cape on a bull. So the privations of Danish soldiers in Afghanistan were shoved further down the list for the moment.

Something the prime minister was probably not sorry to see.

In a few hours Carl was going to be at Rødovre High School, meeting with one of the former boarding-school teachers. A man Kimmie had had an affair with, according to Mannfred Sloth.

A strange, irrational feeling, experienced by many policemen during an investigation, ran through Carl.

Despite the fact that he’d spoken with Kimmie’s stepmother, who’d known her from when she was a little girl, he’d never felt as close to her as he did at this moment.

Staring into space, he wondered where she was.

The image on the TV shifted again, and the story of the blown-up house at the rail yard near Ingerslevsgade was repeated for the gazillionth time. All train traffic had been suspended; a few overhead wires had been blasted to smithereens. Further down the line were also several of
the railway’s yellow track-repair cars, which probably meant that rails had been ripped up.

The image of the assistant police commissioner came into focus and Carl turned up the volume.

‘All we know is that the house had probably been the residence of a homeless woman for some time. Railroad workers spotted her off and on during the last few months when she slipped out of the house, but we haven’t found traces of her or anyone else.’

‘Is it possible that a crime was committed?’ the female reporter asked in that excessively empathetic way that’s designed to make inferior news coverage seem earth-shattering.

‘What I can say is that, as far as transit authorities are aware, there was nothing in the building that would naturally cause such an explosion, and certainly not of the magnitude that we see here.’

The reporter turned to the camera. ‘The military’s explosives experts have been investigating the scene for several hours.’ Then she turned back to the commissioner. ‘What have they found? Is anything known at this point?’