Life and Limb (14 page)

‘I
've spoken to Vohnsen. He thinks we may be able to sue for damages and claim compensation.'

He had been woken by sweeter words, but you had to take what was on offer, so he stroked her hair and let her talk.

‘Hmmm,' Wagner mumbled, trying to pretend he was joining in the conversation.

Ida Marie carried on talking while she snuggled up closer to him.

‘I need to get hold of Mum's medical notes from the US with all the info and the name of the surgeon who operated on her. Vohnsen thought that I might have to hire an American lawyer.'

He didn't feel that he could
um
and
ah
his way to more physical contact without bringing himself into discredit, so he said,

‘How do we prove a claim without an autopsy?'

She sighed into his neck.

‘I couldn't bear the thought of them cutting Mum up, you know that. She'd only just died. But they took samples and she acquired the infection in the US, there's no doubt about it.'

‘It won't bring her back,' he said, stroking her hair and back, wishing she would drop the subject.

He wanted to add that it wouldn't erase the unhappy mother–daughter relationship which, for some strange reason, made the loss even harder for Ida Marie to bear. Somehow it was much easier to say goodbye to someone with whom you had an uncomplicated relationship. Ida Marie and her mother had fallen out on a regular basis and had engaged in so many massive rows that he had stopped counting. And, despite this, his wife had been left with grief so profound that there was very little he could do to help.

Ida Marie started to cry. It took a heart of steel to resist a woman crying, especially if they looked like a beautifully carved Madonna figure from a bygone age. He was reminded of a Virgin Mary statue he had seen as a child in Germany, a statue the locals claimed cried tears of blood. Right now it felt as if Ida Marie was drenching their bed with tears of blood, and genuine physical pain shot through him.

‘You'd better meet Vohnsen, so the two of you can decide what to do,' he said, referring to their family lawyer, to compensate for his own helplessness. ‘If it's a case of medical negligence, it obviously needs investigating.'

What would such an investigation involve? Would she have to travel to the US? Would they have to exhume Dorothea Svensson and carry out a belated autopsy? What was the procedure for such things?

‘I miss her,' his beloved wife sobbed against his neck. ‘She was a cow, but I loved her.'

He kissed his wife and got out of bed. He would have liked to comfort her in another way but had to make do with brewing them a cup of strong coffee. He and Jan Hansen were meeting the bartender from the pub by Åboulevarden after the morning briefing.

The bartender looked as if he needed a stepladder behind the bar in order to be seen. Wagner's first thought was that the man must have been a jockey in the past. He was tiny and sinewy and wearing tight-fitting jeans and an equally tight-fitting T-shirt; he moved with surprising speed, as if he was perpetually taking part in a competition to complete the most work possible in the shortest amount of time. This morning's challenge was putting chairs on the tables so that he could sweep and – Wagner presumed – wash the floor before the first drinkers arrived.

Jones was Irish and had lived in Denmark for fifteen years.

‘Guess why,' he said as he perched on a table, although it looked as if sitting still was a struggle.

‘A woman?' Hansen suggested brightly.

‘Yep. Got it in one! Blonde hair, blue eyes – the works.'

Danish women have
a lot to answer for
, Wagner thought as he pulled out the photos of Mette Mortensen and Arne Bay.

‘I understand you were working here last Saturday night. Do you recognise either of these people?'

Ryan Jones did.

‘They arrived together at around one o'clock.'

‘And what happened then?'

Jones took the photo of Mortensen to have a closer look.

‘That's the girl from the stadium, isn't it?'

Wagner nodded.

‘Poor girl. I knew I recognised her when I saw her picture in the paper, but I couldn't place her.'

‘Tell us about her,' Hansen said.

Jones looked up from the photograph.

‘She seemed so … alive. Animated. They met some friends sitting over there, in that corner.'

He pointed.

‘Whose friends?' Hansen asked. ‘His or hers?'

‘His. Definitely his. They're regulars. Football fans, you know. Right-wingers.'

His tongue struggled to form the Danish words and they came out slightly garbled.

‘All sorts of people come here,' he added. ‘But especially football supporters. We have three large screens, so we're the best sports pub in Aarhus.'

He spoke with pride, and Wagner could well understand that. It wasn't the pub's fault that some people used football as an excuse for violence.

‘Can you remember how long they stayed? What they drank? And who paid?' Jones gave up trying to sit still and started wiping the tables with a cloth he fetched from behind the bar.

‘They stayed until we closed at two a.m. Many people did. I guess they were warming up for the AGF match later that afternoon. They certainly drank a lot of beer.'

‘What about the girl? Was she a beer drinker?' said Hansen.

Jones nodded.

‘They took turns buying rounds. They got quite loud. And then this new guy turned up.'

Hansen looked at Wagner; neither of them said anything. Jones continued talking while he concentrated on removing a blob of candle wax from the tabletop.

‘I'd never seen him before, but a couple of them seemed to recognise him. He didn't look like one of them, if you know what I mean.'

Wagner knew that a good barman was a discreet one. Part of his discretion meant saying no more than was strictly necessary.

‘What did he look like, the new guy?' Hansen asked.

‘Tall,' came the answer.

Spoken by a man who would find most men tall, this was not a very precise description.

‘Thin. Long face, bit like a horse.'

‘How tall?' Wagner said.

Jones tilted his head and looked up at the ceiling as if scanning for more spilt wax to remove.

‘Very tall.'

‘What happened then?' Wagner asked.

Jones started polishing the counter with circular movements. Wagner glanced at the beer menu, which boasted more than thirty different bottled and draught beers, and fought the urge to order something cold and refreshing.

‘As I said, they all left when we closed an hour later.'

‘Did they all leave together?' Hansen asked.

Jones shook his head.

‘The girl and that guy there.'

He nodded in the direction of the photo of Arne Bay. ‘They left with the tall fella.'

S
he should have said no.

She should have slammed down the phone the second he started talking about a deal. She wasn't the type to do deals with her sources; she didn't trade favours. Some journalists did, she was well aware of that. Complimentary theatre tickets, a free flight, all in return for a favourable review. Not necessarily a rave write-up, but positive at least.

Dicte drove out of Aarhus and joined Randersvej by Stjernepladsen. She could have waited until she had finished work and would be heading home anyway. She ought to have waited, but there was something about the phone call – possibly something in the man's voice – or maybe it was just a hunch that spurred her on, even though she felt conflicted. She should have said no.

Driving behind a heavily laden semitrailer, she decided that she had been played for a sucker. It took a lot for her to allow herself to be manipulated by a total stranger, especially someone she couldn't even see. The man on the phone, however, had given her the impression it was her world rather than his that would implode if she ignored him.

‘Christ Almighty!'

Dicte shook her head, despairing at herself as she overtook the semitrailer. The bottom line was that she didn't want to risk missing out on something important. And anyway, she was perfectly safe: she was meeting him in the cafeteria at Skejby Hospital, a public place where other people would be present. Even if the man was a serial killer, he would be hard pressed to do anything between plates of meatballs and cakes and clattering cups of tea and coffee.

Serial killer. She mulled over the notion as she turned off Randersvej and drove up to the hospital, scouting for a park. In between interviewing and writing she had been online and read up on what she already knew, but it sent shivers down her spine all the same. Torsten was right that a serial killer was beginning to seem likely. All the features were there: the ritualistic treatment of the body immediately after the killing; the staged crime scenes at the three stadiums; the fact that the murders had been committed over a long period of time and that there were three deaths – so far.

She couldn't help speculating about the killer's ‘signature', as people called it. In the world of serial killers this term was used in addition to what the police normally described as the killer's modus operandi or MO. The MO described the method of the killing – if the victim had been strangled, hanged or stabbed, for example. The concept of signature included any actions carried out in connection with the killing to satisfy the killer's emotional needs. Did he cut off a lock of his victim's hair and keep it in a secret place? Or did he take her shoes? Mette Mortensen's shoes and handbag were still missing. Did that mean that the killer had kept them in order to look at them or touch them?

Dicte cruised up and down the wide road looking for a place to park; all the well-lit spaces were taken.

The method of killing might change but the signature always remained the same. Torture was one kind of signature. The gouged-out eyes might be a case in point.

She spotted a vacant space and slipped the car into the bay, although she had ended up a long way from the main entrance and Building 6, and this meant a lengthy walk.

The signature was interesting because it revealed something about the killer's personality and motive. What sort of person would derive emotional satisfaction from poking someone's eyes out? A monster, she thought, knowing that Torsten would instantly correct her. The killer's actions were driven by his own unique logic, and that was what she had to try to understand.

She shivered as she approached the main entrance, even though the sun was shining and the summer promised more than it looked capable of delivering. The signature was what would silence the screaming lambs.

The cafeteria was empty apart from two uniformed guards sitting at a table near a man dressed in white hospital clothes and a towelling dressing gown and reading
Avisen
. She judged him to be about thirty years old. He had thick, blond, shoulder-length hair and a body which could have belonged to a footballer, albeit one who had been dropped from the team. He seemed thinner than he ought to have been; less muscular than would be expected for a man of his build. There were traces of dark stubble on his gaunt face and he had high cheekbones that caused shadows to play on his skin. He looked up when she entered.

‘Peter Boutrup?'

His eyes stopped her in her tracks. They seemed to impale her in mid-stride; they weren't hostile, merely scrutinising.

‘A serial killer,' he said and she recognised the voice. He shook the newspaper that was open on the page containing her articles. ‘You believe it's a serial killer.'

‘I don't believe anything.'

She stepped closer. She didn't hold out her hand to shake his but didn't know why. His eyes followed her, and she had a strange feeling she had seen them somewhere before. She grasped the back of a chair.

‘You wanted to speak to me? You said you had information about the stadium murder.'

He stared at her, hard, without saying a word.

‘Who are you?' she said.

He pointed to the article.

‘You're not dealing with a serial killer,' he said at last. ‘That's the information I can give you.'

She pulled out the chair and sat down, unbidden, some distance from him. She felt observed, both by him and the two guards, who looked out of place. What were they doing in a hospital?

The noises in the cafeteria buzzed in her ears: the catering staff chattering behind the counter; the clink of a teaspoon as one of the guards stirred his coffee; the rustling of the newspaper when Boutrup turned a page.

He appeared to sense her unease and he then spoke in a vaguely amicable tone.

‘The two gentlemen over there are with me. I've been granted “supervised leave”, as it's called.'

She looked at him and could clearly see now that he was ill. His cheeks were sunken and his skin was very pale, almost yellow, though it wasn't immediately noticeable because his eyes were so powerful and almost sustained the illusion she was talking to a healthy person.

She was waiting for him to continue when she realised he was expecting a counteroffer. She didn't want to play his game; nevertheless, she couldn't stop herself saying, ‘You're in prison.'`

He clapped his hands.

‘Wow. You're good.'

She looked at him.

‘But you're sick and receiving hospital treatment.'

She was annoyed with herself. She didn't want to be manipulated and yet she was chatting away like a ventriloquist's dummy and he was controlling her. And he smiled at her – a very winning smile which transformed his face.

‘Clever girl.'

‘But how is that any of my business? Why should I care what an inmate on supervised leave wants to tell me?'

He folded the paper and pushed it away as if bored with it. To reinforce this impression he yawned audibly. He smiled again, and she had no defence against that smile. It hit her in the solar plexus and a warm, tingling feeling spread all over her body. He leaned across the table. She wanted to draw back but she didn't budge.

‘You can leave if you want,' he said. ‘No one is forcing you to listen to me or to believe a word I say.'

She tried to hold on to the reason she had come and ignore all other questions.

‘Why isn't it a serial killer? What makes you think that? Do you know the killer? His motive?'

‘Easy now!'

He laughed and held up his hand to stop her.

‘I think you've seen too many movies. That's not the way we play it.'

His finger brushed her arm, almost by accident.

‘One step at a time. That's how I like it. Things don't move that fast in Horsens.'

The maximum security prison in East Jutland, she thought. Accompanied by two uniformed guards. Whatever he was inside for, it had to be more serious than tax evasion.

‘What did you do?'

‘Who, me?'

Boutrup fluttered his eyelashes at her, feigning innocence. ‘I haven't done anything. None of us has. We'll all claim we were set up, at least, when you ask so directly.'

She had to play along.

‘Okay, let me rephrase the question: Why are you inside?'

‘Involuntary manslaughter.'

The pitch of his voice had dropped.

‘That covers a multitude of sins,' she said. ‘What happened?'

His echoing laughter rolled through the cafeteria and probably reached the information desk in the main entrance.

‘You're priceless, you are. Why would I tell you that?'

She could think of only one answer.

‘I've got something you want, haven't I? Wasn't that what you said? You wanted to do a deal?'

‘You bet you have. You'd better believe it. And you're bright, but you're not as bright as you think you are, because you still haven't sussed it.'

She hadn't, but she
had
grown increasingly uneasy as he spoke. She felt she was stumbling around blindfolded.

‘What's wrong with you?'

Again he smiled that smile of his. It transformed him and made him seem like the gentlest man on earth.

‘At last,' he said to the surrounding air, and repeated it, almost in triumph. ‘At last.'

He leaned further across the table, closer to her.

‘I'm a kidney patient and I receive dialysis twice a week,' he said. ‘It's a treat, if you ask me, because it gets me out from behind the prison walls in Horsens. But it can't continue, according to my doctor. If I don't get a new kidney soon, I'll die.'

His eyes were on her; they were everywhere and she could not escape. She knew what was coming, and, deep down she knew she had been expecting it. It was his eyes. His eyes and the smile that she knew so well.

‘The circulation in my legs isn't very good,' he continued. ‘Surgery isn't without risk, and it's all about upping the odds, my doctor says.'

He paused. If she left now, if she picked up her bag, she might be able to run away from what was perhaps the fulfilment of a dream, but what was much more likely to be the start of a nightmare. But she didn't have time.

He said, ‘My best chance is to get a kidney from a close family member. A parent, for example.'