Life and Limb (33 page)

J
ohn Wagner never ceased to wonder at human vanity and folly. Nor did he ever cease to make assumptions when he was working on a case. You had to assume that people lied. That witnesses lied. Even victims would lie if they thought they could get away with it – if they survived, that is. And relatives lied and for motives that appeared utterly pointless to anyone but themselves. Often motives that they were convinced had little or no bearing on the case and therefore couldn't possibly be of interest to the police. No one liked to lose face; no one liked to admit to his or her own mistakes. No one liked it when their own, or their spouse's, infidelity or lack of love was held up for all to see, destroying the carefully constructed image of a perfect life.

He had to remind himself of this ancient truth yet again when he asked Mette Mortensen's mother, Marianne, to take a seat in his office. She had requested the meeting and she hadn't come just to find out how the investigation was going. It was obvious she wanted to confess to a lie or, to phrase it more charitably, correct a misunderstanding.

‘Ulrik wasn't Mette's father,' she said the second she had sat down. ‘Mette was twelve when I met Ulrik. I don't think they ever got on. I suppose there was a fair amount of jealousy involved.'

Wagner watched the woman. He wondered if this was how Mette would have looked one day if she had lived: sad and drained of colour with rat-tailed hair, grey at the roots and blonde at the tips. Or was it the impact of death that had done this? Of course it was; he recognised it so easily. Behind Marianne's wretched exterior he detected traces of a beautiful woman with high cheekbones, symmetrical features and a slim figure. Her eyes were blue and dull.

‘Why are you telling me this now?'

He said kindly as he reminded himself of her loss.

‘I didn't think it was important,' she said, resorting to the mother of all bad excuses. ‘How could it be? He couldn't possibly be involved and he would never have touched Mette, I'm sure of it. It wasn't like that. But there was this …'

‘Yes?'

She fumbled for the word before she found it.

‘Contempt, I think that describes it. Ulrik felt so much contempt for Mette. He despised her taste in clothing – she loved everything pink and girly. Her taste in music and her lack of interest in politics. Her taste in men. Because she preferred detective fiction to highbrow literature. Her choice of career.'

‘Accountancy?'

Marianne Mortensen was kneading her bag on her lap. He suddenly remembered her home-baked rolls and softened towards her.

‘To cut a long story short, he didn't understand her. He didn't see how much she needed a father and how important it was for him to accept her the way she was. Her biological father abandoned her.'

Wagner waited for her to elaborate.

‘She got her love of numbers from him. He was a professor of mathematics, but he lacked empathy and only cared about his subject. We divorced when Mette was six. She loved him so much but he always forgot her – his turn for weekend visits, her birthday and Christmas. She never crossed his mind.'

Marianne squeezed her bag again.

‘Ulrik could have been a more sympathetic stepfather. Perhaps he was jealous of Mette's real father, but he would never have hurt her, I know that.'

‘And his alibi? Does that still hold?'

She nodded emphatically.

‘Oh, yes, that's not why I'm here. We were at home, both of us, all night.'

‘So why are you here?'

Wagner carefully got to his feet.

‘Would you like some coffee?'

‘I'd prefer a glass of water.'

‘Just a moment.'

He went outside to locate a bottle of mineral water and a glass, then returned and placed them in front of her. He found a bottle opener, flipped the cap and sat down opposite her again.

‘The telephone conversation in the middle of the night. I overheard it. Mette phoned him. Oh …'

Tears welled up in her eyes.

They looked at Wagner, shiny and pleading.

‘If Ulrik knew I was here, he would be cross with me. He says it's not important, but I say that's up to you to decide. We've had so many rows about it.'

She took a deep breath. Wagner waited, patience personified on the outside but less calm on the inside.

‘Mette was desperate for Ulrik's approval. Everything she did was wrong in his eyes. But that night – I could hear it in Ulrik's voice – she had discovered something. She had met someone and got her hands on some information which she thought would please Ulrik, but it only seemed to anger him.'

‘What did Ulrik say to Mette?'

‘He told her to forget all about it.'

‘Do you know who it was she had met? Did Ulrik say anything about that?'

Marianne shook her head.

‘It had something to do with his work – that much I understood. Afterwards he couldn't see the importance of telling you. She was already dead, he said. Some madman had killed her. It wouldn't bring her back.'

‘And yet here you are,' Wagner said. ‘Why now?'

She shrugged. Her entire body language expressed despair.

‘It's eating us up. We argue when we should be sticking together. I've got a nagging suspicion he's pleased that Mette isn't around any more. In a way she was a kind of rival.'

‘We'll need to talk to your husband. You do understand that, don't you?'

She nodded.

‘I've decided to go and stay with my mother for a little while. She lives in Randers.'

Wagner got to his feet.

‘Don't forget to leave a forwarding address. Can we reach you on your mobile?'

She nodded again.

At the meeting afterwards he and Ivar K decided to pay Ulrik Storck yet another visit.

‘And the coat? Any news about it?' Wagner enquired.

‘Kiki Laursen's husband was here half an hour ago. He identified it as hers,' Arne Petersen said.

‘And the sequins? Have you chased up the fourth floor?'

Hansen nodded.

‘They've got a match,' he said, ‘so there's little doubt that Mette was at Marius Jørgensen & Sons at some point, possibly Saturday night. Two sequins, at least, are missing from her T-shirt.'

‘Well, in that case …'

It all came together in Wagner's head at the same time. He made a quick calculation. They were missing one final person: The Thin Man. Dicte Svendsen had described the undertaker – his name was listed as Hans Jørgensen, son of the founder, Marius Jørgensen – who matched the description but, on the other hand, so did many others.

‘Okay,' he said to Hansen, ‘bring Hans Jørgensen in here for an interview and advise him of his rights as a potential suspect, and get a warrant to search his business premises. There shouldn't be any problems now that we have matched the sequins. And the glass eye?'

‘Same make as the one found in Mette Mortensen's mouth,' said Hansen.

For a moment everyone froze. It was only for a second, like an extra heartbeat. Wagner knew what caused it: it was the moment when the victim's final minutes played out in their minds, like a scene from a film. Mette on the undertaker's table. Mette, the girl in pink, who loved thrillers and wanted to be a detective, who somehow reached out, grabbed a glass eye and hid it in her mouth. She knew it would point the police towards her killer. She also knew that she was about to die.

Wagner nodded to Ivar K.

‘Ready?'

Ivar K pushed back his chair a little too quickly and popped a piece of nicotine chewing gum in his mouth.

‘Okay, boss. After you.'

K
im Deleuran.

The name circled around her brain as it had done all night. He was the key, she knew. He was the tall thin man.

He hadn't appeared earlier – not under that name. She could eliminate the undertaker as the killer now, although she was fairly sure Marius Jørgensen & Sons were involved and that Mette Mortensen had been in the back room. But they hadn't done the job. They hadn't wielded the knife. He had. Kim Deleuran. Who could he be?

Dicte flung her doona aside. Bo was asleep. She let him sleep and sat down in front of the computer to review all her material – every article and note – to see if she had missed anything. She rewound back to the day at the start of the summer when the body of Mortensen had been found. The day they had buried Dorothea Svensson. Images from those days appeared on her retina. Images from her first meeting with Peter Boutrup; from the rushed, brusque coffee with Anne; from her lunch with Torsten, and the meeting in Wagner's office when they realised that similar crimes had been committed elsewhere. She recalled her meeting with Frederik Winkler – the purring cat and the poster on the wall:
Danish pigs are healthy – they're bursting with penicillin.
She could visualise the photo of the man playing football with his son. She could remember the meeting with Marie Gejl Andersen and her husband, and their outrage at what they had discovered in her father's ashes. The black Doc Martens and the sight of Kiki Laursen outside Arne Bay's door in Jægergårdsgade. The two of them together: the dark-skinned girl and the Nazi, like an unholy alliance against the world. And Bay's strength and hatred when he had pushed her up against the wall and warned her. She could remember …

‘Good morning.'

She nearly jumped out of her skin. Then she turned around. Bo was standing naked in the doorway. She remembered what Boutrup had said and smiled.

‘What?'

‘Nothing.'

She suppressed a giggle.

‘Tell me right now or you'll be sorry.'

He spun her around on the office chair, faster and faster.

‘What's so funny? Is there something wrong with me? Am I too small? Too big?'

He tickled her. She begged for mercy, relishing the moment, those few liberating seconds when death took a back seat. Perhaps the day would come, she had time to muse, when they could hold onto the things that made life worth living for more than brief moments.

‘Peter Boutrup. He said the other inmates would regard you as a real treat,' she said, grinning.

‘Thanks, but no thanks. I only want to be your treat, if that's all right with you.'

‘Only. What do you mean
only
?'

He stopped spinning her round and looked at the text on the monitor behind her. It was open at her interview with Winkler.

‘I've been thinking about something,' he said. ‘Do you remember when we found Bay in the park?'

She nodded. Of course she did.

‘Winkler said something I didn't understand.'

She rewound to that moment. What had Winkler said? Mostly something about not being a good father. She had tried to comfort him as best she could.

‘Hmm. What did he say?'

Bo perched on her desk. She had a clear view of his naked body, but now her thoughts were back in the park and their games were forgotten.

‘He said something about playing them off against each other. But he didn't say who “they” were. I'm assuming one of them must have been Arne Bay.'

‘So who could the other one have been?' She completed his thought process as she remembered the conversation. ‘What are you suggesting? That Winkler knows who Kim Deleuran is?'

Bo shrugged as he got up.

‘Perhaps you should ask him,' he said, then returned to the bedroom.

Dicte sat for a while, staring at the monitor. She reviewed everything one more time. Her first interview with Winkler. The photo of the father and his son playing football. The goalie. There was a boy in goal – a tall, thin, gangly teenager.

She got up, took her bag and packed it with her notepad and pens. She popped her head in to see Bo, who was buttoning up his jeans.

‘I'm going to see Winkler.'

‘Do you want me to come?'

She would have loved to say yes, yet shook her head.

‘It requires trust. If you're there, he might not tell me. And, anyway, he isn't dangerous.'

Bo looked disappointed, but he nodded acceptance.

Frederik Winkler opened his door and asked no questions. He seemed grateful for the visit, but he looked like an old man: stooped and emaciated, with hollow cheeks, as if he hadn't eaten since her last visit. He was wearing the same waistcoat and trousers, except now his clothes were hanging off him.

Dicte had anticipated this and stopped by a bakery to buy some buttered rolls. She waved the bag.

‘Any chance of a cup of coffee?'

‘Yes, of course.'

He shuffled into the kitchen. She sat down in the living room. The cat came over and purred against her leg before settling down on her lap. Her throat tightened as she thought about the old man's misfortunes. No one deserved to lose their son, and certainly not like that – first to political delusion, then to death.

This brought her back to Peter Boutrup, but she shut him out. Nothing left to say there.

‘Here you are.'

He put down a steaming mug in front of her, along with a plate and a piece of kitchen towel. He ripped open the paper bag with the rolls.

For a while they ate in silence before she asked her question.

‘A name has cropped up in connection with the stadium murder. Kim Deleuran. Do you know him?'

The old man stopped chewing and sat very still. The cat shifted and jumped from her lap to his; he put the bread roll back on the plate and started stroking its fur.

‘Am I completely mistaken or is he the young goalie in the photo?'

Winkler slowly shook his head.

‘You're not mistaken.'

He looked at her. She could see he was searching for a place to start a narrative that might well turn out to be lengthy.

‘After my divorce from Arne's mother, I remarried,' he said at last. ‘Her name was Kirsten, and she had a son who was two years older than Arne. His name is indeed Kim.'

‘You said you played them off against each other. What did you mean? Did you know that Kim had killed your son?'

‘I wasn't surprised. I had a feeling the two of them were up to something, and that it wasn't working out quite the way Kim had hoped.'

‘Why didn't you tell someone?'

His tormented eyes looked into hers.

‘I'd hoped it wasn't true. In a way he was my son, too.'

‘So they didn't get on, or what was the problem?'

He stroked the cat again.

‘Arne quickly grew jealous of Kim. Kim was older. More intelligent. His political affiliation was left wing. Arne reacted by going in the opposite direction and so it continued, with both of them becoming more extreme. The only advantage Arne had over Kim was a certain way with women; Kim was hopeless.'

He looked at Dicte and she saw an old man wondering how much his life had been worth.

‘Many years ago when I started my documentary work – possibly to compensate for my son's right-wing activities – Kim became one of my best contacts within the extreme left wing here in Aarhus. He supplied me with photos and information about the Nazis, because the two groups were watching each other like the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. At that point he was studying medicine. He wanted to go abroad and help children in the developing world. But then he changed.'

‘What happened?'

The man's face darkened.

‘His mother died. He loved her very much. She was on the waiting list for a new heart, but she didn't get one in time. It made him bitter. At the whole world, but mostly at the health service where he was already working. I believe he still is – at least, that's what I've been told.'

‘But your son works there, too.'

He nodded.

‘Kim got Arne that job a couple of years ago. They had grown a little closer. Once they were really good friends, I think, but it's hard to tell with boys. They don't say very much. Perhaps you could describe it as a love–hate relationship. It was highly competitive.'

‘What does Kim do?'

Winkler took a deep breath. He picked up the cat and put it gently on the floor. Then he sighed. A long, trembling sigh.

‘For many years he was an assistant in the hospital chapel. He may still be. He's responsible for moving corpses from the morgue to the chapel. In fact, most of his work is dealing with dead bodies.'

Dicte sat still, letting everything sink in. It was starting to make sense. A chapel assistant with access to dead bodies. An undertaker's where the tissue was taken. Kim would have needed someone to keep a lookout and possibly a helper. Arne would have been the obvious choice.

‘He has a nickname which I don't understand,' she suddenly remembered. ‘Sharon, I think it was, like Ariel Sharon. Have you ever heard it?'

‘No, I think you'll find that's Charon – with a
k
. From the ferryman in Greek mythology. He carries the dead across the River Styx to Hades. The river of horror and a
bomination.'

Winkler's voice was heavy with grief and she understood the reference as memories of the old myth resurfaced from bygone schooldays.

‘There was something about eyes, wasn't there?' she said.

‘The dead had to pay to cross. Unless gold coins were placed on their eyes, they would not be taken to the other side. They were forced to return to their graves, whence they would haunt the living.'

She contemplated the irony that Kim Deleuran had despatched the dead to the underworld not with coins but glass eyes. Perhaps it had given him a special kind of satisfaction. Perhaps it had made him feel that he was living up to his nickname.

Dicte looked at Winkler, who had used one son to spy on the other. Ultimately, when you peeled away the politics, this was what remained: a whole family swallowed up by the river of horror and abomination.

‘I know they have released Arne's body for burial. When is the funeral?'

‘Tomorrow. At Åbyhøj Church. His grave will be unmarked. It's the only option or he'll become a martyr for his fellow believers.'

She nodded and stayed only until they had finished their coffee. She had lost her appetite for the rolls and knew she had to get out into the fresh air and away from the oppressive mood of guilt and regret and wasted love. She had once had an intuition that Winkler would be killed by his son or that the father would sacrifice one of his sons. It was starting to look as if both had come true.

‘I'll see myself out,' she said at length and stood up.