The Seventh Child (54 page)

Despite my horror at his revelations, I couldn’t help but be irritated by his histrionics and his word choice. Still the man had, quite exceptionally, hit the bull’s eye.
He’d
found Eva Bjergstrand’s final resting place in the sands of the sound—as well as the noteworthy date of her death. I didn’t dare look at Susanne, afraid we might give away our mutual complicity.

“But why did they think it might be a homicide?” Asger asked.

“She was lying at the water’s edge. She had lesions on her head from a sharp stone. There were no evidence and no technical leads to go on. She could have fallen. She didn’t carry any identification, and the style of her clothes suggested that she wasn’t Danish. One of the countries the newspapers suggested as a possibility was Australia, but no one came forward. The police shelved the case. And the media dropped it.”

And then the knowledge I’d carried for seven years (and had only dared share with Susanne) arrived at Kongslund for the second time. This time with Taasing as the messenger.

The three remaining men at the table had no idea what had happened since, but each understood what forces my anonymous letters had in all probability released. Someone had made the connection to the dead woman at Bellevue, and someone had known where she was from and why
she’d
come.

Even brave Magna had feared the danger she sensed during those days after the anonymous letters had been received—and had tried to rid herself of her secret Protocol just days before she was found dead.

“It has to be connected to the Ministry,” Peter said. “It has to be connected to Enevold or Malle, who are both so eager to find that boy.”

“Or Orla Berntsen,” Susanne said. And then she blushed, as though
she’d
transgressed an invisible line the rest of us couldn’t see.

“If Orla is under suspicion, then we all are.” Asger’s glasses had slid down his nose, and for once the tall astronomer had forgotten all about the sky and didn’t even notice the airplanes that were circling over Kastrup Airport in the distance. “Eva could
only
have come to Denmark to look for her child.” He looked pleadingly at each of us, one by one.

No one contradicted him.

“Eva would have revealed to her child that it had been born under strange circumstances
…
and revealed the scandal
…
that its mother was a murderer,” Asger continued. “The child may have unleashed a great fury. A least that’s how I would have reacted. I would have detested being told that. And then maybe the murderer’s child became a murderer, and that throws suspicion on all of us who were in the Elephant Room that Christmas 1961. Me. You, Peter. Susanne. Severin. Marie. Orla. Nils
…
Eva could have contacted any one of us, and the reaction could have been very brutal.”

“The biological inheritance?” Susanne said. “The murderous mind?” It sounded like mockery.

Asger turned toward his childhood love, returning her gaze from behind his thick glasses. “Yes, Susanne
…
the murderous mind
…
it’s possible.”

“Then what—what about Magna—do you think she was murdered too?”

“Maybe the murderer tried to destroy the evidence,” Asger replied. “And Magna got in the way. With all her knowledge. The anonymous letters set off a chain reaction.”

“
If
she was murdered—they couldn’t prove it,” Peter said.

I closed my eyes.

“But then Marie can’t be under suspicion. She was trying to rake things up,” Taasing offered.

“Yes
…
maybe,” Asger said, a bit absentmindedly.

I would have preferred a firmer response.

Then Taasing abruptly changed the subject. “You haven’t asked me what was in the paper I told you about—the paper that Eva Bjergstrand mentioned in her letter, which
she’d
found on a bench in Adelaide, and that made her so angry she wrote Magna.”

I opened my eyes again.

He was enjoying this, like a hunter lording fresh kill over his empty-handed hunting party. I’d tried to locate the article Eva had referred to by looking through all the major newspapers that might’ve made it to Adelaide, but without success.

Everyone waited in silence for Taasing to continue.

“Only one paper ran a story that could fit the bill,” he finally said. “And that happens to be my own—what was then the party organ, which isn’t so strange, because in a way it was a party matter.” He practically smacked his lips from the satisfaction of this discovery. “How such a small paper winds up on a bench in Adelaide is beyond me—but miracles do happen,” he said with a smirk. “On April 7, 2001, a discreet wedding took place in Copenhagen—more specifically, at Holmen’s Church. The most powerful official in what was then the Ministry of the Interior—which later became the Ministry of National Affairs—was wedded to his cohabitant of many years.” Knud paused again and didn’t continue until it became almost unbearable for his audience. “Chief of Staff Orla Pil Berntsen married Lucilla Morales of Havana, Cuba”—he smiled at the obvious irony and incongruity of the match—“and by his side was the then minister of the interior, our old friend and benefactor, and protector of Kongslund, Ole Almind-Enevold.”

Taasing waited a few seconds, coughed once, and then played his trump card. “They were all there, shoulder by shoulder, in a big photograph. There were no other wedding photos in the paper that day.”

I could feel the shock wave travel around the table.

Each of those present knew what this meant. If you took Eva Bjergstrand’s furious letter at face value, the only interpretation was the one that Knud Taasing’s excellent detective work led to: The shadow in the young woman’s life, the man
who’d
fathered her child and then made her disappear and in doing so destroyed her, wasn’t some dime-a-dozen former celebrity who might produce a little fertile gossip for a few weeks. No, it was a citizen who in every context advocated high morals, loving thy neighbor, and not least the inalienable rights of little children before and after birth.

The minister of national affairs, himself. Ole Almind-Enevold.

If the young woman’s words from the past could be trusted, the nation’s most popular minister had in the early days of his career made a very young girl pregnant—in prison of all places—and then pulled all the strings he could to bury the scandal. When she had her child, a little boy, he was removed immediately, and she was secretly exiled. All traces of the unfortunate episode expunged. Only one minor trace remained—hidden in a box at Mother’s Aid Society for decades—the name
…
John Bjergstrand.

No wonder Almind-Enevold—if the story were true—was taking such desperate measures to cover things up. Without any witnesses—and without the boy himself—the story could be written off as pure fabrication, the result of sick media frenzy and a bloodthirsty opposition. But if the boy materialized, a simple DNA test (which a man of his moral and political standing could not easily decline) would reveal the truth faster than the Witch Doctor could utter “no comment.” Imagine the scandal: one of Kongslund’s little elephants had a mother
who’d
been imprisoned for murder, and a father who at that time had begun his long journey toward the nation’s highest position. If a story like that rose from the crypt of the past—if Knud Taasing or some other reporter were able to verify it—it would cost the minister everything, and in particular the title of prime minister. He would be disgraced to a degree that no Danish politician had ever been, and if degradation were all he got, then
he’d
be lucky. A criminal investigation could ensue—not least because of Magna’s death—if anything suggested a motive for murder.

No wonder Taasing refrained from articulating that part of the story. It was, at this moment, just a treacherous theory, but one that could endanger anyone who knew it, let alone acted on it. There were still too many loose ends, and Taasing, who had already once in his career made such a fatal mistake, knew this better than anyone. I felt fear circle the room again. There was more at stake than anyone had imagined only a few minutes ago.

“It’s a damn shame we don’t have the letter that Eva wanted to send her child.”

I looked down.

In a muted voice, Susanne tried to articulate what most of us were thinking but had no words for: “If Ole really is the father, then that gives him a motive as well
…
” She stalled as if the thought contained demons she was afraid to unleash. “I mean
…
the woman on the beach
…
” She paused once more, growing oddly pale. It looked as though she might at any moment be sick. “Almind-Enevold and Carl Malle—”

Taasing shook his head. “Maybe. Maybe not,” he said, cutting her off. “I discovered something else at the embassy. Two men from Carl Malle’s security firm obtained a visa to travel to Australia a few days after Magna’s death. Of course the embassy clerk had no right to disclose this information, but she did. The next day I called Malle’s office and pretended to be a clerk from the ministry. I asked the secretary whether the two men had returned from Adelaide.” He glanced toward the sound as though the answer was to be found in the waves off the Swedish coast. “She said no.”

“But if Ole or Malle knew
…
or were behind
…
”—Peter let the obvious omission in his sentence linger—“they’d know that Eva Bjergstrand was already dead.”

Asger nodded. “What you’re saying is that if they knew she had come to Denmark in 2001—and never left again—they’d have no reason to go to Australia now. So why would Malle send two men there? It’s a damn good question. And I think the answer is obvious.”

“Yes,” said Peter. “They didn’t know.”

“But maybe they’re just looking for the package Magna sent,” Taasing suggested. “That might be reason enough, so it doesn’t tell us anything.”

Asger didn’t respond. His eyes rested on Susanne, who remained motionless. No doubt
she’d
been just as beautiful when they were children.

“Or,” Asger finally said, stretching out his words, “maybe there’s more between heaven and earth than we realize. One thing is for certain. We all have to gather information about our biological mothers—who they were, where they came from—to find out whether one of them might have been Eva Bjergstrand.” He paused for a moment. “That goes for Orla and Severin and Nils too, of course. We each have to ask our adoptive parents what they really know. What Magna told them. We must demand to see the documents they were given when they adopted us, if these papers still exist.”

As Asger spoke, I could tell what Peter and Susanne were thinking. For Asger it would be no problem—because he already knew where to look. It was easy to incite an unpleasant and risky offensive when you had nothing at stake.

That night I dreamed of Nils Jensen.

He was standing in the moonlight next to his father, the night watchman, at Assistens Cemetery, and they were listening to the Great Poet’s strange and fantastic fable of the child who must live in the darkness underground after having trampled on his parent’s loaves of bread so that he might reach home with dry feet. Because of his arrogance, this child had lost forever his right to the light of this world and the sight of the birds in the sky—and this was a lesson to all the children who followed him.

The old night watchman had told his son nothing about his past, or the miracle that had given the poor tenement family such a desired adoption, of the kind that was otherwise reserved for much wealthier families; that part of the story had been kept hidden until today. Nils Jensen had never suspected anything.
He’d
never had a little, snickering devil on his shoulder whispering truths into his ear—and his father, who in his work forsook the light, had preferred to leave it unsaid.
He’d
never thought the lie would be uncovered.

Now in the living room right off the cemetery of my dream, his eyes darted.

Nils Jensen repeated the question: “Who are my biological parents?”

The truth lit up first in the old night watchman’s eyes, then the entire room. His wife slipped quietly behind the two men and out the door of the room, closing it behind her.

The night watchman and his son were alone in my dream. They sat for a long time without speaking.

“Who are my parents?” Nils said for the second time.

I could just make out what the old man said: “I’ve kept your birth papers for all these years. They told me to burn them, but I kept them.” He sounded apologetic and defiant at once—and he extended his hand toward his boy.

For a moment there was no movement in the room, and for a terrifying second, I thought that was the way it would always be.

But then Nils Jensen took his father’s hand, and I cried because I knew it meant that the child in the darkness wouldn’t be lost forever. The fairy-tale poet might change his ending.

For once I let Fate hang over the edge of the sky, disgruntled, staring down at us furiously—the living and the dead, the newly arrived, the rejected, the barely repaired, the deformed, the pathetic—without jumping up and humbly asking permission to seek cover. It was a rare moment in my life. And of course it was a provocation that—even in dreams—would be punished.