The Killing Forest (18 page)

T
he butcher's words hung in the air, but before Louise actually grasped what he'd said, he averted his eyes and continued. “She'd reached the point where the doctors thought she didn't have long to live. A month, maybe two. At the end she was really sick; she just lay in her room and felt like hell. But she made a fight of it. It was strange for all of us who knew her; she'd been a real ball of fire. And there she was, wasting away from all that AIDS shit.” He looked up at Louise. “You know Roed Thomsen. He couldn't handle his daughter having AIDS. Nobody talked about it. It was like they were ashamed, but it sure as hell wasn't her fault.”

Louise knew exactly what he was talking about. Some people had panicked. They'd thought you could get the disease by kissing or drinking out of the same glass. It wasn't hard to imagine that this locally well-known Hvalsø family had gone into denial about what the poor girl suffered from.

“You may not believe Thomsen can be sensitive, but he was just totally wiped out by all this. He was the one who'd taken her up in the tree. He adored his little sister; he'd have done anything to make her well. I can't remember exactly when he called us all together. His folks were over on Fyn or in Jutland, visiting friends, staying overnight. Eline had asked him to drive her out to the sacrificial oak, so we could call upon the gods to take care of her. In a lot of ways it was really tough, but we didn't think so much about it back then. The important thing was to support Eline, or maybe to feel we meant something to her.”

Louise leaned forward. “What gave her the idea?”

“Thomsen's grandmother grew up at the old girls' orphanage. Eline heard the stories about the girls about to die being taken out to the tree, to make sure the gods were ready to receive them. The stories made an impression on her. She wanted the same for herself.”

“I wonder, is it because of his grandmother's childhood that Thomsen is Asatro, and did he pressure the rest of you to join?”

“He didn't pressure nobody,” the butcher said, irritated at the question. “You become an Asatro because it gives meaning to your life, being one with nature. For Scandinavians it's the most obvious faith there is.”

His aggressive outburst told Louise that he was used to defending himself. “All right. But how did it begin?”

“Like I said, his grandmother grew up with the faith at the orphanage. The director was a gothi. That's what we call our priest. A lot from the old Nordic myths takes place right here in Lejre and Roskilde. It's a part of the region's history, and now we've made it a part of our lives.”

Louise nodded. She thought about Sune, only fifteen years old, yet these men had tried to force him into their brotherhood. The poor kid. The more his father talked about it, the more it sounded like a sect, however much they made it out to be a faith.

The butcher shifted in his chair. “I've never told this to anyone, but I guess there's no reason not to anymore.” He looked first at Eik, then at Louise. “You know anything at all about the sacrificial oak in Boserup Forest?”

He looked surprised when they both nodded. “Anyway, it was a full moon the night we drove Eline into the forest. It was a coincidence, it wasn't like it was something Thomsen could control. But it made the mood special. She wasn't strong enough to walk, so we carried her. There was a lot more undergrowth back then. We hadn't cleared off our bonfire area, either. Eline thought the moonlight looked like silver that fell from the sky. We put blankets out on the ground and built a small campfire.”

Louise couldn't make herself ask if Klaus had been there.

“So she just sat there with her back against the tree, in the campfire's light, wrapped up in her white comforter. We sat in a circle around her and called upon the gods.”

His voice was gentler now. It sounded a few shades darker, as if the memory was fresh enough for him to remember the mood.

“Something very special happens when you're in harmony with nature. When you stand in a circle with the heat from the campfire, the light of the moon, the stillness of the forest, you can feel the force of the gods. You feel their presence, spiritually and physically. You get the very strong feeling you're not alone. It's very peaceful.”

He looked at them hesitantly, as if he'd just exposed himself and was waiting to see how they'd react.

“I know, you're right,” Eik said. “I've been at a winter solstice celebration. It's a really special feeling.”

Louise looked at him but chose to not say anything.

“None of us had discovered it yet,” the butcher said. “Not until we opened up the circle to give Eline some cola to drink, and to sit for a while and enjoy it while the fire burned down.”

“Discovered what?” Louise said.

“That she was bleeding.”

He rubbed his nose and had difficulty continuing. “She'd brought along a pocketknife. She'd cut herself around her elbow—deep cuts—the blood was streaming down on the ground.”

Louise felt a chill; she remembered what Camilla had told her about Sune.

“Thomsen flipped out, he tried to stop the bleeding. He tried to bind her arm, but she kept taking it off, and at last he left her alone.”

Louise could almost sense how it must have felt that night in the forest.

“I don't know what she and Thomsen talked about, and I never worked up the courage to ask.”

“And she died?” Eik asked.

The butcher shook his head. “Yes and no. She didn't die right off. She died later at home that night.” For several moments they took in what they had just heard. Then he leaned over with his forearms resting on his thighs, his hands together.

“How did Thomsen explain this to his parents?” Louise asked. She could almost hear the old police chief's voice as the butcher told them what happened.

“His father wouldn't listen when he said it was Eline's doing, or that we couldn't prevent it. He didn't believe Thomsen had tried to stop the bleeding, either. He never accused us of killing her, but we knew he blamed his son for her death.”

He bit his lip. “In a way it was his fault, of course. Our fault. We should never have taken her out to the forest when she was dying.”

He spoke quietly after a long pause. “Eline chose to take her own life, and we helped her.”

Eik broke the difficult silence that followed. “But I don't understand how she ended up in one of the old graves of the girls.”

The butcher squirmed. Louise could hardly stand to look at him. He was allowing them access to what lay deepest inside, down where it was truly gruesome. “The police chief didn't want it to be said that his little girl had committed suicide. As if he hadn't been able to take care of her, or hadn't loved her enough.”

“Why is this something no one talks about?” Louise said. “Why don't I know anything about this story?”

“Because no one wanted it to come out. She was reported missing, and that was that. The police chief took care of it somehow; I don't know how. No one dared to ask. Everyone was scared of getting on the wrong side of Roed Thomsen.”

“And then he buried her out in the forest?” Louise said.

He shook his head. “
We
buried her. He kept out of it. I mean, think of what it would have looked like if he'd somehow been involved with his own daughter's death?”

“And then…?” Eik said.

“And then we passed the oath ring around. We'd all been Asatro for quite a while, but this was when we formed a brotherhood and took an oath of silence. Klaus did, too.”

He looked at Louise, but immediately she realized she didn't want to know more.

“We promised each other to never say anything about it, and we swore to be each other's brothers, no matter what.”

Suddenly he seemed drained; in despair. “I've failed Sune. I've never been strong enough to break free of what went on back then. I've been a shitty father. The brotherhood with Thomsen and the others has always been more important than my family, and it's my fault anyway that they punished him. I should never have pushed him into it.”

It's a little late for that
, Louise thought.

He was clearly tired now. His forehead furrowed.

“You do know you'll have to tell Roskilde Police what you've told us, don't you?” Louise said.

He'd nodded even before Louise had finished speaking. Apparently he'd already realized that, which was a relief to Louise.

“Of course. I know I've kept my mouth shut way too long. That's over with.”

C
amilla poured herself a large gin and tonic in a beer glass. She sat on the terrace and looked out over the fjord at Ring Island, at the ducks rocking in the lazy waters. Her body still tingled with some exhaustion she couldn't shake.

Frederik startled her when he yelled from the kitchen. She hadn't heard him come home; she hadn't even noticed that the wind was chilly now, that she had goose bumps on her bare arms.

She'd called him when she got home from the forest, after the ambulance had left with Sune. He still had a board meeting and a telephone conference with the American office, but she had been okay with that. She needed some time alone.

Jonas and Markus had gone into Roskilde to “hang out,” as they put it. She'd lacked the energy to determine how likely it was that beer and cigarettes were part of the plan. Or if they were just sitting innocently in the city park, listening to music.

Her thoughts had been with Sune after Louise had called. The latest report was that his condition had stabilized. She'd found him in time.

She caught herself feeling useless. Even though she didn't know Sune, and she couldn't help at the hospital, she felt close to him. Suddenly everything seemed empty.

“What the hell happened to the tree?”

Camilla turned, and she jumped up when she saw Frederik's face. “The tree?”

“Someone disfigured the warden tree. They must have used a chain saw.” He was already on his way back to the courtyard.

She emptied her glass; the alcohol burned all the way down. She followed him through the kitchen and out to the front steps, where she stopped abruptly.

Large patches of white wood showed where the tree trunk had been ripped into. On the ground under the tree lay piles of wood shavings, like hair on the floor of a beauty salon. When she touched the exposed wood, it felt damp.

The defacing began half a meter above the ground. Camilla's first impression was that it looked like graffiti on a newly painted wall. It enraged her. Slowly, she approached the tree while Frederik walked around it with his phone to his ear. Tønnesen, Camilla guessed.

Why hadn't she heard it? Camilla counted twelve separate areas where the trunk had been damaged. That must have taken time. Then she thought about Sune.

“They were here while the boy was dying,” she said, shocked at the notion that someone was cutting here while she and Elinor were calling the ambulance. She'd returned directly from the forest without coming around front.

“Tønnesen is on his way,” Frederik said. “I want that tree taken down. I'm not going to let them think they can scare us this way.”

“Do you think that's wise?” She hadn't realized it before, but the old superstition in fact made Camilla nervous.

Frederik backed off and craned his neck, looking up at the treetops. He shrugged. “At least it will show people that we won't be threatened.” From the way he spoke, she knew he'd already decided.

“Who knows we have a warden tree?” she asked. She noticed one mark on the trunk that seemed different from the others.

“Probably everyone around here who believes in that sort of thing, who takes an interest in the old mythology,” he said.

She wanted him to look at something, and he joined her. “Has this always been here?” she asked, though the question was unnecessary—the exposed wood was fresh.

Frederik ran his finger around the carved circle, inside of which was a cross with small marks on the ends. “I think it's a rune.”

Camilla took a picture with her phone. She assumed she could Google runes. At that moment, the manager drove into the courtyard and jumped out of his car.

“What the heck happened here?” he said, though Frederik had already told him everything. It was obvious what had happened.

Camilla walked back to the house in a daze. A week ago she would have thought role-playing and Viking markets if someone had mentioned Asatro. It would never have occurred to her that some people actually practiced it, truly believed in it.

Confused, she sat down in the kitchen. What were they trying to say? She didn't understand why someone had turned against them. But she agreed with Frederik: The tree had to come down. They couldn't let anyone intimidate them this way.

P
izza, cola, and French fries covered the table, like a cliché about how the police ate when they were working feverishly. They sat inside the Roskilde Police Station, Louise with half a pepperoni pizza in front of her. She felt as if she was mooching, because she and Eik had done their job: They'd found the boy and reunited him with his family. But there were a few details to take care of.

Every time Louise saw the image in her head of Jane lying in bed, holding her son's hand, she swallowed. She'd thought she had control of her emotions; she shook her head at the memory of all the sessions with Homicide's psychologist to learn how to separate her emotions from her work. At the same time, she could hear Sune's voice. Homicide's leader had always maintained that people without empathy could never be good investigators. They didn't belong in his division.

Louise blinked quickly a few times when Nymand said that one of the two bodies found along with Lisa Maria had just been identified. “We haven't notified next of kin yet,” he said, with a look that said the following information was extremely confidential.

“The body is that of a young woman, Anette Mikkelsen. She disappeared in 2005, shortly after her twenty-third birthday. She worked as a prostitute.” He paused and glanced around the group of policemen.

“I know the identity of the last one,” Louise said, quickly wiping her fingers on a napkin. “Her name is Eline Thomsen. She was the daughter of your former police chief.” Nymand turned to her, surprised. “The girl was thirteen years old when she died in 1988. Her brother and his friends buried her out there, but her father forced them to do it.”

Nymand lifted his eyebrows in disbelief. “And where did you come up with that insane allegation?”

She ignored the look he gave her. “It's not an allegation. I have a witness who described what happened. He helped bury her.”

“I think we should keep Roed Thomsen out of this. His son might be a bad apple, but there's no reason to bring accusations against a man well respected in the community for many, many years.”

“If you don't believe me, I suggest you investigate what happened to the daughter when she disappeared in 1988. My guess is you'll find she was reported missing and no one has seen her since.”

Nymand shook his head at her and changed the subject. “I've also spoken to your forensic pathologist, Flemming Larsen. He's finished with the examination of the body we dug up at Hvalsø Cemetery.”

Her
pathologist? Louise thought. It was quiet in the room. She saw from the looks on several faces that no one knew what he was talking about. Apparently they hadn't heard there was another body involved.

She nodded without replying.

“They found the old report from the inquest.” He turned to the others in the room. “It took place in the house where the deceased was cut down from a rope in the hall.” He explained that it concerned a twenty-one-year-old man who had been part of Ole Thomsen's gang. He tactfully left out Louise's connection.

“The report states that the deceased was found with his legs slightly bent. There was lividity in the hands, feet, and lower legs, which is consistent with hanging.”

Nymand looked at Louise. “During the autopsy, Larsen found he'd sustained a hard blow to the back of his head.” Now he read from the paper in front of him. “The lines of fracture issue from the middle of the back of the head in several directions, and some evidence still exists of a subdural hematoma.”

He looked up again at Louise. “Do you know about the suicide note found in the house?”

Every eye in the room was glued on her. She wanted to duck her head, but she just nodded.

I'm sorry.
That's all the note said. He hadn't even signed it, or addressed it to her. When she was told about it, she had asked not to see it.

Nymand stuffed the papers back into the plastic dossier file. “We're going to investigate this. We'll have an analysis made of the handwriting. I assume you still have something bearing his signature?”

Louise nodded again. She thought about her small suitcase up in the attic, filled with pictures and letters from her past. Some of them came from Klaus.

The meeting continued with a list of what had been seized at Pussy's farm. Illegal agricultural products, poisons, Polish soda pop, vacuum-packed meat in a large freezer in the barn. At the mason's, they had confiscated large piles of cash and some receipts that the people at the Economic Crimes Unit would entertain themselves with for some time. Double-entry bookkeeping, black-market money, value-added tax fraud. None of this surprised Louise.

Nymand didn't mention Gudrun or the janitor from Såby. She knew that a few of his people already had spoken with René Gamst, who was still prepared to testify against Ole Thomsen. She suggested that they also speak with Lars Frandsen.

“He can also tell you about Gudrun and the janitor. And about Roed Thomsen's daughter.”

The meeting continued. They were planning to arrest Big Thomsen and his gang that very evening. Presumably the men would be interrogated immediately, though it was possible they would be stashed in cells until the next morning. But Louise had no doubt they at least would be shaken that evening to see what fell out. It was still unclear if others were seriously involved in the gang.

“Should we take off?” Eik whispered in her ear.

She pushed her chair back to stand up. She glanced around at the personnel who were about to begin what would be a long, arduous shift. For a moment she envied them, but she knew she couldn't be part of this, no matter what. Her focus wouldn't be on the young prostitute or Sune. Or on Klaus, Eline, the janitor, or Gudrun. For her it would be a personal vendetta against Big Thomsen. She felt relieved to know that despite everything, she was professional enough to realize this.

“Good luck,” she said. She followed Eik out into the hall.

On the way to the car, she reached over and pulled a cigarette out of the inside pocket of his leather jacket. Without a word, he handed her his lighter.