The House That Jack Built (12 page)

Wednesday
June 18

Chapter 25

L
ars was exhausted.
A great, inner void was sapping all the energy from his brain and body in small, continuous drips. More than anything, he wanted to lie in a corner, fold his jacket under his head, and settle in for a good nap.

He'd had three glasses of wine and a single beer yesterday. Too much to drive, yes. But a hangover? He wasn't that old. The disapproving look he got from his mom would give anyone a migraine.

The voices around him drifted together, deep, distorted. Drawn out consonants, deep vowels. Roaring predators in slow motion. Then the sound sped up. Toke's voice:

“Are Frank and Kim A on their way?”

Lisa walked through the door balancing a tray from the canteen, five cups and a Thermos of coffee. She placed the tray on the table and poured the coffee, first for Toke and Lars, then for herself. Lars took the plastic cup then sat down in his office chair.

Lisa looked at her watch. Toke grumbled, grabbed a pen from Lars's desk, and started working on a crossword.

Another five minutes went by, then the two men rolled into the office. Frank was in the middle of telling a story; Kim A was laughing boisterously. He placed his fleshy backside on the desk with his back to Lars. Lisa took Frank's usual place on the windowsill. She was hanging on Frank's words.

“And so the guy says, ‘You're not pulling that one on me' and sits down.” Frank shook his head. Kim A's shoulders were bouncing.

“Fucking unbelievable,” he gasped.

Lars cleared his throat. Toke looked up, expectantly. Kim A and Frank didn't seem to have noticed. Lisa caught the look of annoyance on Lars's face; she continued laughing but more quietly and to herself.

Lars cleared his throat again. “If I could get —”

“Two seconds. I'm just . . .” Frank began. Then he spotted Toke staring at him. He went quiet.

Kim A turned to Lars. “Just something we needed to finish.” He gave Frank a sly smile.

“Yes, so I hear.” Lars took a sip of coffee. “If you're done, maybe we could get started?”

“Of course, boss.” Frank nodded, leaning back against the door.

Lars glowered at them. Kim A, he could understand. Their relationship had always been strained. But Frank? Lars knew that his past raised a red flag for most police officers, but was it really only his friendship with Ulrik that had kept them from falling upon him?

He placed his cup back on the table. A couple of months. This case, maybe one or two more — then he was gone.

He gestured to Lisa. “Lisa, can you give us an update on Mikkel Rasmussen?”

Lisa straightened up. She brought everyone up to speed on their interrogation of Mikkel. Lars took out a photograph of Mikkel's shirt.

“Toke?”

Toke dropped the newspaper and pen on the desk. “I sent a sample to Forensics. We should have the results in a few days.”

“Let's hope it's positive.” Lars got up. “We have to place Mikkel Rasmussen near Nørregade or Nørreport at the same time as Stine. You know what needs to be done. Toke, the two of us are taking Rasmussen.”

“Have a seat.” Lars kicked a chair across the room to Mikkel Rasmussen. He did his best not to sound unfriendly.

Mikkel shook his head, stared at them with bloodshot eyes. “I'd rather stand.”

He probably didn't get much sleep in detention
. Lars looked down at a random report, then directed his attention back at the suspect.

“We searched your apartment.”

Mikkel shrugged.

“We found this under the kitchen sink.”

Lars nodded at Toke, who pulled out the grey denim shirt they had found in the apartment and laid it out on the table.

“Is this your shirt?” Toke asked.

“If you say so.” Mikkel was staring at a point just above the table.

Lars recognized the resignation in the suspect's face; he'd seen it a million times before. Now it was only a matter of coaxing a confession out of him. A smile spread across Toke's face.

“This stain here, what is that?” Lars pointed at the spot on the front of the shirt.

Mikkel shrugged. “What do I know? Salad dressing? Dishwashing detergent maybe?”

“I've seen this kind of stain so many times I don't need a forensic analysis to tell me it's blood.”

Mikkel shrugged again.

Lars continued. “What if I told you that it was Stine Bang's blood?”

Mikkel looked pained. He sat down. Lars almost felt sorry for him. Then he thought about Stine Bang and Louise Jørgensen at Rigshospitalet.

Mikkel leaned back in the chair. “Okay, I did it. I hit her.”

Toke winked at Lars.

“Listen, let's take it from the beginning. When Stine left Penthouse, how long did you wait before you followed her?”

“What do you mean? I didn't foll . . . ? Ah.” Mikkel's face collapsed. “You think I beat and raped that girl?”

“That bloodstain is pretty convincing.”

“I had a nosebleed.” Mikkel had his face in his hands. His voice sounded hollow from behind the layers of flesh and bones. “You showed me the pictures yourself. You saw her hit me. And yes, I hit back.”

Lars and Toke exchanged looks.

“It doesn't matter what I say,” Mikkel mumbled. “You still won't believe me.”

“Okay.” Lars rested his elbows on the table. “Let's say it did play out the way you say it did. Did anyone see you at the club with blood on your shirt?”

“No idea. I just left and walked straight home. Don't they have surveillance cameras in that club?”

“Why didn't you tell us all of this yesterday?” Lars was doodling on the back of a printout of one of Ulrik's emails.

“I don't know, maybe because that police lady was so damn pissed off.” Some of the aggressiveness from the previous day was returning. “If I'd told you I hit her but didn't rape her, you wouldn't have believed me.”

“We still don't believe you,” Toke said.

Lars folded the shirt. “It would be a good idea to get a lawyer now, Mikkel. If you don't have one, or can't afford one, the Crown will appoint you one. The state will pay.”

“Whatever. Can I get some coffee?”

“He doesn't seem to care.” Toke closed the door after an officer had taken Mikkel away.

Lars scratched his head. “Listen, I've got a bad feeling about this.”

“In rape cases, there's almost always previous contact,” Toke reasoned. “Two out of three cases. You know that.”

“Well, yes and no.” Lars turned to the window. It needed cleaning. In the courtyard below, a group of civilians on a guided tour tilted their heads skywards. He turned around.

“Call Forensics. Get them to speed up the analysis.”

Toke shook his head. “Mikkel isn't going anywhere. There's no reason to put pressure —”

Lars's cell rang.

“Hi Lars. It's Simon.”

“Simon?” He didn't recognize the voice.

“Maria's Simon. Do you know where Maria is? She's staying with you now, right?”

He liked Simon, but he knew better than to get involved. “She's probably at an exam. Listen, I'm sorry, but I'm in the middle of something here. I'll make sure to tell her you called.”

Toke stood with his hand on the door handle.

Lars put the phone down, then exhaled. “There were two days between Stine and Louise getting raped. If it wasn't Mikkel, then the perp might strike again tonight.”

Toke sighed. He was already searching for Frelsén's number on his cell.

Chapter 26

A
n infernal rumbling
shook the packed cabin. Sanne grasped the armrest, leaned her head back, pressed her neck against the headrest.
It's going to be all right
, she chanted to herself. But she wasn't able to convince her body. Cold sweat ran from her armpits and between her breasts, beaded on her upper lip.

Takeoff and landing were always the worst.

She was the one who had half threatened, half persuaded Ulrik to approve the official trip to Bratislava to return Mira's body. Not exactly a dream assignment. But she needed to meet the mom, Zoe Vanin, to better understand Mira as a person. But there were no direct flights from Kastrup to Bratislava, so she had been forced to book a seat on a LOT Polish Airlines flight that stopped in Warsaw. Two takeoffs and landings outbound, two takeoffs and landings inbound. Same day. And down below, a mother was waiting with the Slovakian airport police for her daughter's casket. As a representative of the country where her daughter had been murdered, Sanne was responsible for conveying the official condolences. This was definitely not her day.

Directly beneath the plane, the large, black hole of Bratislava's M. R. Štefánik airport was pulling her in.

She was in a bare, windowless room with the airport police. Sanne placed her purse on the sticky plastic table and looked around. Two chairs. Dirty grey walls and a single exit. The wall opposite the door was adorned with a calendar of Slovakia's most popular tourist destinations. The month of June showed pictures of Bojnice Castle and Čachtice.

Her purse started vibrating on the table. Diana Ross's “Upside Down” echoed through the room. She pulled out her cell phone. It was a Danish number, Copenhagen Police headquarters.

“Hi, it's Allan. You've landed?” He sounded agitated.

“Yes, just now. Any news?”

“You were right.”

“How so?”

The sound of rustling paper filled the receiver.

“Elvir Seferi. Meriton claimed that Elvir had played cards with him and Ukë in the club the night Mira disappeared.”

“And?” She clutched the back of one of the chairs.

“Our colleagues in Middelfart had him in lock-up all night. He was drunk, pissed on a seat while travelling the Intercity train from Århus to Copenhagen without a ticket. The train left Århus at 8:01 p.m. and arrived at 11:18 p.m. at Copenhagen Central Station.”

“And he was arrested on the train in Middelfart at . . . ?”

“9:16 p.m. The trains were running on time, down to the minute.”

She sat down. “Why haven't we heard about this before?”

“Provincial policing.” Allan laughed, then the phone went quiet. “Sorry. I didn't mean —”

“Never mind.”

Allan continued: “The officer who arrested him — his computer went down, so he filled in one of the old forms by hand. He was meant to enter the details into the central registry the next day but the following morning he got sick.”

There was a knock at the door.

“I have to run.” Sanne hung up just as the door opened and a woman with short, bleached hair walked into the room.

Zoe Vanin wasn't very tall. Her grey skin was etched with deep lines and she had a severe look on her face. The dark roots of her hair spread out toward dry, bleached ends. Her hand shook as she opened her purse and took out a cigarette and lighter. A Slovakian policewoman followed her in and closed the door behind them.

Sanne smiled and nodded at the chair on the other side of the table. The woman lowered her gaze, then sat down. She lit her lighter. The flame flickered, shook in the stagnant air in the room. She couldn't hit the end of the cigarette.

“My name is Sanne Bissen. I'm from the Danish police. You're Zoe Vanin, Mira's mother?”

The woman looked up at the Slovakian policewoman who translated. Zoe nodded.

“
Áno
,” she answered. Her voice was the creaking hinges of an old door being forced open for the first time in years.

“Yes,” the interpreter translated. “Mira was her daughter.” Then Zoe collapsed into thin, shrill sobbing. Her shoulders shook. Tears dripped down on the unlit cigarette in her hand. The Slovakian policewoman stared at her, unmoved.

“My condolences, Miss Vanin.” Sanne leaned forward.

The woman nodded, dried her nose on the sleeve of her jacket, and tried to light the wet cigarette again, but she had to give up and pull out a new one. Sanne held her wrist steady until she'd managed to get it lit.

“Did she suffer?” Zoe looked up, held Sanne's gaze.

“She was shot. She went quickly.” The image of the naked body by the edge of the water with flies buzzing out of the empty eye sockets surfaced in Sanne's mind. She shook her head. “Her eyes were removed, but we believe that happened after she died. No, I don't think she suffered.” There was no reason to tell her about Frelsén's assessment of the probable sequence of events, the autopsy report. The glass eye. How would that benefit Mira's mother?

Zoe breathed out. Then, eventually, she began to tell her story.

She was twenty in 1989, when the rumours of the demonstrations in East Germany, of the borders to the West opening in Czechoslovakia reached her hometown of Borisoglebsk, which was halfway between Moscow and the Caspian Sea. Like so many other young people, she was adventurous. She wanted to get out, to find a better world, the world all young Russians dreamed of. So together with a friend, she set out to the West, to Czechoslovakia. When they arrived, the wall had fallen, but neither Zoe nor the girlfriend made it across the Iron Curtain, which was now gone. Instead they were in a foreign country, with no money and a nationality the Czechoslovakians detested. After almost two weeks had passed, hunger and hopelessness drove them into prostitution. Mira was born before the first year was up. Life had gotten somewhat better after the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Suddenly the Czechs were the enemy. But Mira was rebellious; she also dreamt of a better life, a different world. And one day, toward the end of February, she had left without telling Zoe. Zoe had received a letter from her daughter, from Gdańsk, Poland, then another from Copenhagen. After that, silence.

Sanne had to ask Zoe one final question, then she would leave the grieving mother in peace.

“And you only heard from your daughter the one time, just after she arrived in Copenhagen?”

Zoe didn't answer, lost in the haze of the cigarette smoke.

“Miss Vanin?”

Zoe looked up, so ashen that Sanne was sure something had died inside of her.

“Yes?”

“Did you hear from Mira in Copenhagen? After the first time?”

“She called one other time. She had just gotten my letter.” Zoe curled the letter up in her hand, lowered her voice. “She was very scared. She said the men who controlled her —”

“Her pimps?”

“Pimps, yes. They had killed a girl. Mira saw them carry the body away.” Zoe grabbed Sanne's wrist. Her frail fingers had surprising strength. “Were they the ones who killed my Mira?”

Sanne placed her hand over Zoe's, patted it, then loosened her grip.

“Did Mira say when that was?”

“She didn't say — I think, between when she got my letter and when she called.”

“Your letter is postmarked April 22. When did she call?”

Zoe shook her head. “I don't know. Maybe the thirtieth? I remember it was a Friday. I was busy.” Her eyes hardened.

Sanne got up, went over to the calendar, and flipped through it. The month of April was illustrated with a dramatic photograph of Modry Kostolik, the Blue Church. She quickly found the thirtieth.
Piatok
, it said.

The Slovakian policewoman followed her finger and translated with a flat, toneless voice.

“Friday.”

Friday April 30 — four days before Mira had disappeared. What had she been doing over the weekend and at the beginning of the following week? At some or other point, Meriton and Ukë had killed one of their girls, if Mira had been telling the truth, and disposed of the body. There was no denying it shed new light on the case.

Sanne sat down in front of Zoe again. “Do you know how she came to Denmark? Who helped her?”

Zoe shook her head, sniffled.

“In the neighbourhood around Krizna,” the policewoman said. “That's where most of the prostitutes hang out, also where the human traffickers find the girls.”

Sanne gazed uneasily at the woman sitting in the middle of the room. She had become a mother far too young. Now she had to bury her grown-up daughter before she had even turned forty.

Sanne held out her hand.

“
Vd'aka
,” Zoe whispered, taking her hand. She didn't look up.