The Killing Forest (3 page)

R
emember to check your mail,” Hanne called out when Louise walked past the secretary's office. She stopped, turned on her heel, and walked back with a smile plastered on her face, only to discover that her mail slot was empty.

She'd known Hanne Munk since the secretary was in Homicide, Louise's former department. At the time she had thought that Hanne was a breath of fresh air, with her mountain of red hair, loud clothes, and exaggerated gestures, but after Louise transferred to the Search Department her relationship with Rønholt's secretary had been strained, to put it mildly.

“Thanks for reminding me,” she said on her way out of the office. Even though she knew Hanne's style, it annoyed her that the secretary hadn't even in the tiniest way welcomed her back.

Menopause, lack of sleep, too little sex, Louise thought as she answered another message from Jonas, who asked if it was okay for him to stay over with Nico after the movie.

Does that boy ever change his clothes?
Louise rushed down the hall to the Rathole, the double office she had been given earlier that year after being chosen to head up the newly formed Special Search Agency in the Search Department. They were responsible for cases of missing persons when criminal activity was suspected.

There was more than enough space for the new unit, which up to then consisted of her and Eik Nordstrøm. Yet it irritated her that Rønholt couldn't find a different locale for them; they were right above the kitchen, and they were privy to the menu every day. The shabby office had even been invaded by rats, though Pest Control had finally taken care of that.

She opened the door and immediately froze: A large German shepherd growled viciously at her, its shackles up and teeth bared, its eyes fixed on her. She leaped back and slammed the door shut. Hearing Eik's voice farther down the hall, she turned to see him walking out of the copy room, stuffing a flattened pack of cigarettes into his pocket.

Earlier, while driving in, she'd thought about seeing him again after all this time; about what to say. And now he was standing in front of her. Her whole body felt warm, all the way to her fingertips, and when he spread his arms to greet her, she completely forgot why she hadn't felt up to seeing him out at the cottage.

“How are you, beautiful?”

He pulled her close, but then he apparently remembered her broken ribs and let go.

“Sorry I didn't call you back,” she mumbled awkwardly, and immediately changed the subject to the dog in their office.

“Let me go in first,” he said. “It's Charlie, and I probably ought to introduce you two.”

“I've already met the beast,” she said. “It nearly went for my throat.”

“Don't be silly, he wouldn't hurt you. He just has to get to know you. You're an intruder to him; he's been with me in the office while you've been gone.”

Eik opened the door to the Rathole and sat down in the doorway as the big dog ran toward him. Louise noticed that the dog limped and that his right rear leg hung in the air. He landed in Eik's lap and began licking his face so eagerly that he almost knocked Eik over.

“What happened to him?” Louise asked. She stayed out in the hall while her partner got to his feet and grabbed the dog's collar.

“Charlie boy here caught a bullet while he was chasing a bank robber in Hvidovre. It tore his thigh up. Luckily the vet thinks he'll be able to use his leg again, though he'll never go back to the dog patrol.”

“So he's a police dog,” she said.

Eik nodded while scratching the dog's snout.

“And his trainer?” Louise asked.

Eik nodded again, looking sad now. “He's the one who shot and killed the bank robber.”

Every police officer knew about the Hvidovre case, an armed robbery. A few months ago two masked men had entered the bank with sawed-off shotguns, forced a few customers down on the floor, and confronted the bank's employees. Louise couldn't remember how much they got away with, but it didn't matter. The police had arrived quickly, and in the nearby parking lot they surrounded the two robbers, who were carrying a bag stuffed with money.

One of the robbers began shooting at the police and hit the dog. Not long after, the man also lay on the ground. Dead. Nineteen years old. The other robber was his father. Two men with no criminal record, who chose the worst possible solution to their desperate economic situation.

The tabloids screamed the story of the father whose painting business had gone bankrupt. Two years earlier, he'd had twelve employees and a large residence in Greve. The son had been a trainee in the business. Then it all fell apart, leaving the father hopelessly in debt and the son adrift in life.

“No one robs banks anymore,” Eik said. “Everyone knows they'll get caught. He's a ruined man.”

“The father?” Louise asked. She hadn't followed the trial. Armed robbery meant a lengthy sentence, and the fact that the other robber, his son, had been killed wasn't going to shorten it.

“Him too,” Eik said, nodding again. “But I'm talking about Charlie's father. He's sitting at home now, staring at four walls. I don't think he'll be back. We were at the police academy together. We haven't seen all that much of each other since then, but he and Charlie did drop by occasionally. So I told Finn I'd take care of the dog until he got back on his feet.”

And that was that, Louise realized. She couldn't come up with anything to object to, either. She nodded and took a few tentative steps toward the office.

Charlie sat up beside Eik's leg.

“Come on over and say hi to him.”

Louise grabbed the dog biscuit he pushed over to her. But before she could offer it to the dog, he was on his feet, teeth bared again. She hopped back into the hall.

“Okay, we'll save the introductions until later,” Eik said. He pulled the big German shepherd over to his desk while scolding him as if they were an old married couple.

“Stop!” Louise said. “I want him out of here!”

“Wait a second,” he said. He grabbed a leash and wrapped it around a leg on his desk a few times, then attached it to the dog's collar. He ordered the dog to lie down.

Louise finally walked to her desk, accompanied by a low snarl.

“Honestly,” she said. “Can't you take him home? It's ridiculous, him lying there growling at me.”

“He's used to coming along. Otherwise he'd have to be fenced up, and I don't have a fence.”

“That's too bad, because he can't stay here!” she said.

“Come on, Louise. Charlie's a good boy. You just have to get to know each other.”

Now she was getting mad. In the first place, she was the boss of this two-person unit. In the second place, she would never dream of bringing Dina along with her to work if the dog bothered anyone. But before she could say anything more, her telephone rang.

“Special Search Agency, Louise Rick.” She turned her back to Eik, who was still talking to the dog, trying to get it to shut up.

Her stomach knotted the second she heard Mik's voice. She knew he was about to inform her that disciplinary proceedings would be brought against her concerning her treatment of Gamst during the arrest at the gamekeeper's house. She also realized in that split second that she didn't regret a thing, even though it could affect her career.

“Hi, Mik,” she said, her voice calm. She sat down.

“We have a case here that I'm passing on to you,” he began. Nothing in his voice hinted that she'd poured out the tale of her shattered life to him the day before.

Louise immediately pulled herself together; after all, she headed up the Special Search Agency of the Search Department.

“Why, what is it?” she asked.

“It's a missing person report from a few weeks ago, but there's something suspicious about it. Rønholt asked me to give it to you,” Mik hastened to add, as if he was apologizing. “A boy from Hvalsø disappeared.”

She groaned inside. She didn't need more ghosts from her past creeping into her life, and certainly no more cases involving people she'd known while growing up.

“The boy's name is Sune Frandsen,” Mik continued. “He's the son of Frandsen the butcher. The one with the white van.”

Louise stiffened. The butcher. She had reported him for illegal sale of meat and dealing on the black market. Actually, all she had done was tell Mik about it, because she never could catch the men who once had been part of Klaus's circle. He'd probably escaped with a warning, she thought.

“Okay,” she managed to say. “I didn't even know he had a son.”

“Sune disappeared on his fifteenth birthday, which was about three weeks ago,” Mik said. “And we haven't found a trace of him. He left his wallet and phone in his room. The family is already in a bad situation—his mother is dying from cancer. That's had a big impact on the boy.”

Louise jotted notes down on a pad.

“He was in the eighth grade at Hvalsø,” Mik continued. “The principal of the school and the boy's parents are afraid that he ran away from home to take his own life. His father describes him as unusually quiet before he disappeared. As I've said, he was very unhappy about his mother's illness; he was having trouble dealing with it. The school reports that Sune had skipped a lot of classes the past few months, and that his classwork generally wasn't going well. Apparently that wasn't like him.”

Louise nodded. She was well aware that boys committed suicide more often than girls. Especially when carrying around this type of emotional burden.

“I still don't see why you and Rønholt decided to give us the case.”

“Sune's class teacher has just been in to see me,” Mik said. “He brought along a newspaper,
Midtsjællands Folkeblad
. It's a local rag. Delivered door-to-door,” he added, as if the explanation was needed.

Louise knew the paper, which her parents got.

“He showed me a photo of a few fox cubs from an article in the paper's nature section. They were taken from one of those photo hides that nature photographers use, so they don't scare the animals away. The cameras take pictures automatically; they have a motion sensor or an invisible infrared ray. In other words, the photographer wasn't there when the picture was taken.”

“Okay,” Louise mumbled, nudging him on.

“The fox cubs were, of course, in the foreground, but far back to the right there's a boy sitting on the ground beside a small campfire. The teacher is absolutely certain it's Sune.”

“Okay then, so all you have to do is find out where the photo was taken. Then drive out and bring him home,” Louise said. She still didn't understand how this involved her unit.

“It's not that simple,” Mik said. “Yesterday, when the paper came out, the teacher drove to the parents' home to show them the photo, and it ended up with him being thrown out of the house, literally. Sune's father ordered him to keep out of the family's business. He refused to look at the photo, and he didn't want to hear that his son could be hiding, in need of help.”

“How much does the boy in the photo resemble the butcher's son?” Louise asked. She looked over at Eik, whose desk was pushed up against hers. Obviously he hadn't been following the conversation; his eyes were glued to his computer screen. Louise realized she didn't even know if any new cases had come in while she'd been gone, or if he was looking at some of the old cases they had been given. Somehow she had managed to push work completely out of her head.

“It looks a lot like him,” Mik said. “This seems to be a clear missing person case to me, and we've had it for two weeks now without making any real progress. That's why I'm sending it to you.”

He was following procedure. When a missing person hasn't been found within two weeks, local police stations shuttle the case on to the Search Department, which then picks up the investigation, tracking the movements of the person and collecting identification information.

It was almost too strange that the butcher from Hvalsø ended up on her desk, Louise thought. True, her unit—she and Eik—primarily investigated and did fieldwork, while their colleagues in the department for the most part worked in the office, coordinating registers and searching international data banks for personal information pertaining to searches. But she had been back for all of ten minutes and there he was. The butcher. If Mik had called Friday, it would have been Eik or one of the others who would been sent to the small mid-Zealand town.

“I don't think I've ever heard of parents accepting the disappearance of their child,” she said. She glanced over again at Eik, who was still staring at the monitor. “In fact, they usually have a horrible time dealing with the situation, even when there's a corpse involved.”

“Exactly,” Mik said. “Something's wrong here, and that's why I think you should look at it, too.”

C
amilla Lind picked up the pace. What had looked like a small shower when she left home was now a downpour. Maybe she should turn around, she thought. But she loved the smell of the wet forest floor, the raindrops plunking her sweaty forehead.

She had begun running after moving into her in-laws' large manor house, Ingersminde, in Boserup, not far from Roskilde. She never went very far, but at least she ran, which gave her the opportunity to explore the large section of private forest on the property.

The path narrowed and curved to the right, passing through a small thicket that quickly gave way to the more open space of forest. As she ran, she tried to come up with a good title for the interview she'd been working on all day. She was a freelance journalist, currently taking assignments for the paper in Roskilde, and once in a while they gave her some doozies. But it had been a pleasure to interview Svend-Ole at his little workshop out in Svogerslev. For the past thirty-five years he had emptied the slot machines in Tivoli, and he had a large collection of one-armed bandits in his garage that he and his wife enjoyed playing.

Suddenly Camilla caught sight of something between the trees. She slowed down. Everything looked blurry through the rain, but she could make out a boy crouching under a big tree, eating something he picked up off the ground. Even at this distance, she could see he was soaked to the skin, his wet hair plastered to his head.

She started walking over toward the clearing. As she drew closer, she smelled wood burning, a sour odor, and she noticed a large area where there had been bonfires, which made her wonder. She'd definitely never been here before.

“Hi!” she called out. “Aren't you cold?”

The boy started when he heard her voice, then immediately jumped up and ran.

Which surprised Camilla, who called out, “Hey, wait!”

But the boy sprinted off. Strange, she thought. She decided to run after him.

Just before reaching the tree, her legs slipped out from under her. She swore loudly as she fell, landing on her stomach in a mud puddle.

Slowly she stood up. Besides being shaken by the fall, she was covered with mud. She walked over and sat down with her back against the tree. A wet pile of picked-over food lay where the boy had been sitting. She thought it looked like leftovers from a grill party. It troubled her that the boy had been eating it. Some animals in the forest seemed to have been feasting, too, from the looks of the several gnawed bones scattered around. But they'd left some of the food. They must have been interrupted. Maybe by the boy, she thought, shuddering.

She was getting cold, sitting there in her wet jogging clothes, but she couldn't stop thinking about the boy. Though the forest was private property, everyone had the right to walk through it, meaning that he had no reason to run. Some people did drive in, which was forbidden, but Frederik or the manager gave them hell when they caught them.

Camilla winced from the pain in her knee. After standing up and carefully shaking her leg, she leaned over to wipe the mud off. Strangely enough, the mud was more red than brown. Suddenly she realized it was blood, not mud.

Desperately, she wiped her hands on the tree trunk, then she jogged through the trees toward a small stream she'd discovered earlier. She felt foul, unclean. Along the way she tore off leaves from saplings and bushes, and tried to wipe the blood off.

She was freezing by the time she found a path down to the stream. Cautiously, she stepped onto the stones sticking up out of the water and squatted to wash her face. She cleaned her arms with leaves and let the icy water run onto her legs. Muddy blood streamed down her thighs and calves. She scooped up more water; the thought of being covered in blood nauseated her.

She heard a sudden noise in the forest behind her, twigs being stepped on, something being dragged along the forest floor. She whirled around in fright and almost lost her balance at the sight of an old woman in a broad-brimmed straw hat, a long braid hanging down over her right shoulder.

“The wagons are rolling on the Death Trail,” she said. Her clear, ocean-blue eyes looked earnestly at Camilla. Then, using a sturdy limb as a cane, she turned on her heel and vanished silently and astonishingly quickly into the forest.

Camilla stood midstream, too shocked to speak to her. She had no idea where the woman had come from; had heard nothing until she was practically at her back. She didn't even know if there was an entrance to the forest anywhere near the stream.

She hurried home in the twilight, dripping wet, her heart hammering in her ears.