The forgotten girls - Sara Blaedel

THE FORGOTTEN GIRLS

SARA BLÆDEL Translated by Tara F. Chace

My own little mother

I long for you

If only you knew

How they mistreat me

For I am confined to bed

with a belt and gloves on

a little mother of my own

I long for you.

from Solborg’s Book by SOLBORG RUTH KRISTENSEN

GET AWAY, GET AWAY, it thundered in her ears as the branches and stones on the forest floor slashed at

her feet and shins. There was a rushing sound in her head and fear made her heart constrict.

She moved toward the only light she could see. Like an opening in the darkness, the white gleam

pulled her deeper into the woods. Confused and afraid, she lurched ahead through the trees, gasping for

air.

Her fear of the dark encircled her throat in a chokehold. It had been like that ever since she was

told to turn off the light and go to bed when she was little. Otherwise Away would come and take her.

Away, Away, Away, it echoed steadily, and she wasn’t able to block the branch that slapped her

cheek.

She stopped and held her breath, stood absolutely still surrounded by the profound darkness from

the tall trees that towered around her. Her legs trembled with exhaustion. Frightened by the sound of her

own sobs she crept forward in slow steps, her eyes locked on the light up ahead. It blinded her when she

stared right into it.

She didn’t know how she had escaped. The door had been ajar, and they didn’t notice that she had

positioned herself by the door. She had been overcome with joy to see the sun, which warmed her and lured

her toward it, but that was many hours ago and now everything was cold and unsafe instead.

At one point hunger forced her to give up and she sat down. She didn’t know how long she sat

there. Twilight fell while confused fragments of images whirled around in her head. Ultimately she couldn’t

find any peace so she got up again. She wasn’t used to broken routines and didn’t like being alone. Not

even from the one who had remained behind.

She picked up the pace, moving closer to the white light. It drew her in like an irresistible force;

she shut out the pain and the noises. She had gotten good at that. But she had never learned to handle the

fear. She had to get out of the dark, otherwise Away would come and take her.

She was close now, just had to go a little further, past those last trees. The rhythm of her heart

slowed when she spotted a lake, illuminated by the moonlight. Just as she was about to slow down, the

earth suddenly disappeared from beneath her feet.

Four days. That was the amount of time that elapsed since the woman’s body had been found in the woods

and the police still had not been able to identify her. They still did not have even the slightest lead to

follow, and Louise Rick was feeling frustrated on Monday morning as she turned in and parked in front of

the Pathology Lab.

The autopsy had started at ten o’clock and it had been a few minutes after ten when the head of the

Investigative Division, Ragner Rønholt, came into her office and asked her to drive over there and assist

her colleague Eik Nordstrøm. Pathology had just notified them that they had decided to upgrade the

autopsy to include collecting samples for DNA testing.

It was Louise’s second week as technical manager of the Missing Persons Task Force, the new

unit that had just been established within the division. 1,600–1,700 Danes were reported missing every

year. Many of them turned up again and some were found dead, but based on National Police Commission

estimates, there were crimes behind about five of the unresolved missing person cases.

Those were the cases her team was tasked with investigating.

Louise got out and locked the car. She didn’t understand why they needed her at the autopsy when

Eik Nordstrøm was already there. She hadn’t met him yet, because he’d been on vacation the last four

weeks. He was the only one in the division she hadn’t said hello to yet.

Louise had reviewed the list of missing persons Friday afternoon and determined that none of the

missing women matched the description of the woman who had been found in the woods. Maybe Rønholt

just thought she ought to be present when the body was examined, she thought, but it could also be because

her previous position had been in the homicide division and she had more experience with autopsies than

her new colleagues.

It was actually strange to be assigned to something that felt somewhat familiar after a week in

uncharted waters. Louise had totally forgotten how hopeless it felt to start a new job. You couldn’t

remember people’s names and didn’t know where the Xerox machine was. She had spent the first week

getting the “Rat Hole” in order. A hell of a name, she thought, hoping it didn’t stick, because she was

already a little tired of her colleagues’ snide comments on the unused office at the end of the hall. The

double office was right over the kitchen and it had been empty since Pest Control fought off a major rat

invasion the previous spring. But the rats were gone now and no one had seen them since, her new boss

assured her.

Ragner Rønholt had done what he could to get the new task force up and running. They had

bought new office chairs, fresh bulletin boards, and plants. The assistant chief was partial to orchids so he

had obviously felt that they needed something green in there to bring some life to the unused office, which

of course was certainly nice Louise thought. But what really meant something to her was that she could

sense his commitment. It was clear that Ragner Rønholt was determined to get his new task force up and

running. They had been granted one year to demonstrate that there was a need for a special, dedicated

missing persons unit, and for Louise there was everything to be gained. She had said farewell to her

position in the homicide division, so if the new job didn’t end up becoming permanent she risked winding

up as some local detective at some random station within the district.

“You decide who you want,” Rønholt had generously said when he presented the idea of heading

the task force to her.

Since then she’d given a lot of consideration to who would be well suited to it and the ones who

had ended up on her list were all people she had worked with before. Experienced and skilled.

The first was Søren Velin from the mobile unit. He was used to working anywhere in the country

and had good contacts at the local police stations. But he was happy in his current position, so Louise didn’t

know how easy it would be to get him to switch. The other question, of course, was whether Rønholt would

match his current salary.

Then there was Sejr Gylling from the fraud division. He was an out-of-the-box thinker and would

be a fantastic asset, but as an albino he couldn’t tolerate bright daylight and she wasn’t sure if she could

stand working with the shades drawn forever. But there was no doubt that he would be the best pick for

running checks in the international missing person systems.

Finally there was Lars Jørgensen, her most recent partner from homicide. They knew each other

inside and out and she was comfortable working with him. She also had no doubt that this type of work

would suit his temperament quite well in addition to his lifestyle as a single father to two adopted Bolivian

boys.

In other words there were a lot of good options. Louise just hadn’t decided yet which of them she

should try to reel in first.

*

Outside the door to the autopsy section, she spotted Åse from the Center for Forensic Sciences. The slender

woman was squatting down next to her bag, but got up smiling as Louise reached her.

“We took a couple pictures for you before we got started for real,” Åse said after greeting Louise.

“Just of the woman’s face in case you decide to ask the public to help identify her.”

“Yeah, something tells me we may have to do that,” Louise admitted even though those kinds of

pictures always caused a stir. Some people thought it was too macabre to show the faces of the dead that

way.

The forensic pathologist’s green eyes were somber when she nodded toward the autopsy rooms.

“Well, the woman in there won’t be hard to recognize if she has any next of kin,” Åse said. “The whole

right side of her face is one large scar, presumably from a burn. It goes all the way down over her shoulder,

so if she hasn’t been reported missing yet, a picture is sure to be your best chance of figuring out who she

was.”

Louise nodded, but didn’t have a chance to respond because Flemming Larsen walked over to

them with two lab techs right then. The tall pathologist smiled warmly when he spotted Louise.

“What the heck are you doing here? Well, I guess we haven’t seen the last of you yet!” he

exclaimed happily and gave her a hug. “I was afraid you were trying to avoid me when you suddenly

decided to switch departments.”

“You thought no such thing,” Louise retorted, shaking her head and smiling.

Louise had known Flemming for all eight years she’d been with homicide. She had enjoyed her

work there and had actually been planning to stay in the position, but now that Willumsen wasn’t there

anymore and Michael Stig had been named the new group leader, when Rønholt made his offer she had

jumped at the chance without even stopping to think.

“Is Eik Nordstrøm in there?” Louise asked, nodding at the door to the autopsy rooms.

“Eik who?” Flemming asked, giving her a confused look.

“Eik Nordstrøm from Missing Persons.”

“Never heard of him,” Flemming said. “But let’s go on in. We’re done with the external part of the

autopsy, so I’ll just give you the rundown.”

Louise wondered where Eik could be as she held the door open for Åse into the vestibule where

the rubber boots and lab coats where lined up in a row.

“What do we know about the woman?” Louise asked as she put on a lab coat and hair net.

“Not much so far other than that a forestry worker found her Thursday morning by Lake Avn in

Central Zealand,” Flemming said, passing Louise a green facemask. “According to the postmortem, she

died late Wednesday or early Thursday morning.”

“The police think she fell or slipped off a several-meter-high cliff and landed unluckily,” he

continued. “They did the postmortem on Friday in Holbæk and, along with the health inspector, the local

police up there decided an autopsy should be done. And that,” he added, “was because she died alone, but

also because we have no idea who the woman is. It’s also why I decided to upgrade the autopsy to include

DNA.”

Louise nodded and agreed. DNA and a set of tooth imprints were always the first step toward an

identification. It would have been nice if Eik Nordstrøm had shown up, then one of them could follow up

with the forensic dentist right away, she thought irritated.

“I think I can almost say with certainty that this is not your average woman we’re dealing with,”

Flemming continued, explaining that that was clear both from the clothes she had been wearing and the

condition of the body, which they had studied during the external portion of the autopsy. “Or at any rate it’s

not a woman who lived your average life,” he corrected himself.

“We ran her fingerprints through the system, but we didn’t get any hits,” Åse added. “I think she

might not be Danish.”

Flemming nodded and admitted that was definitely a possibility.

“At any rate, it’s clear that she has not participated in any type of social life for quite a few years,”

he specified. “You’ll see what I mean.”

The forensic pathologist led the way into the white, tiled hallway where the autopsy bays sat side

by side to their right. In each bay, pathologists were bent over stainless steel tables bearing deceased human

bodies, and Louise quickly looked away when she spotted a baby on one of them out of the corner of her

eye.

“When we scanned the deceased’s head before we started the autopsy, we found clear,

pronounced, deep grooves in her brain,” Flemming elaborated. “She quite simply had a large cavernous

space in there, so there hasn’t been much activity in there.”

“Do you mean she was developmentally disabled?” Louise asked.

“Well, she wasn’t the next Einstein at any rate.”

*

The “murder room” was at the end of the hallway. This rear autopsy room was twice as big as the other

bays so there was room for the police representatives and crime scene techs, but it was equipped the same

way with a stainless steel table, a wide sink, and bright lights.

Louise couldn’t actually tell that the woman lying in the middle of the room had been unkempt

given that she was filthy, but she certainly wasn’t well groomed at any rate. Her hair was long and tangled,

her nails hadn’t been clipped recently, but the most notable thing was a big scar that covered one of her

cheeks and pulled her eye down a little giving her a sad look.

“The dentist was astounded after his exam to put it mildly,” Åse said, pulling out her camera. “He

said that it’s extremely rare for him to see a set of teeth that have been so neglected. The woman’s teeth are

full of cavities and they’re extremely crooked.”

Flemming nodded. “Apparently she never had any form of orthodontia done and there is

pronounced periodontitis in her upper mouth,” he rattled off. “She’s already lost quite a few of her teeth.”

Louise grabbed a tall stool, which she scooted over closer as Flemming started the internal exam.

The organs had already been dissected free and placed on a stainless steel tray over by the sink.

“We’re dealing with a fully-grown woman, but I’m having a hard time estimating how old she is,”

he said as he bent over the body. “With regard to the distinctive scar, I’m convinced that it was never

treated. It’s a severe injury from some time ago. There may also have been cauterization.”

He said that last part contemplatively while he was clearly considering the possibility.

“There was no skin graft and it must have hurt like the dickens when it happened.”

Louise nodded. That had been her first thought as well.

“She also has an old scar by her navel. It could easily date all the way back to her childhood. And

at some point she fractured her left ulna, which was never treated.”

The pathologist looked up at them as he drew the first conclusion.

“All of this tells me that she was very neglected throughout her life and probably led a rather

isolated existence.”

Louise studied the woman’s feet. They looked like she had been walking without shoes on. For quite a

ways, actually, Louise thought, eyeing the shredded soles of her feet and the wounds around her ankles.

Flemming again turned his eyes back to the woman’s body and continued the autopsy in silence

until he stated a short time later that the deceased had broken seven ribs on her left side in her fall from the

cliff.

“There are 2.5 liters of blood in her left pleural cavity,” he reported without looking up. “And the

lung is collapsed.”

Louise took out her Dictaphone and positioned it so it was recording Flemming’s observations

regarding the dead woman’s body. Åse photographed the whole process and collected the materials that

were going to be sent to the Center for Forensic Sciences. The samples Flemming collected as he worked

would be sent on to the forensic geneticists upstairs.

Once he had finally rinsed the internal organs and studied them one by one, Flemming

straightened back up and told Åse he was done.

“Beyond the broken ribs and the blood in her pleural cavity there are no signs of violence,” he

concluded and then rolled his tight-fitting gloves off. The pathologist tossed them in the trash before

continuing. “My preliminary assessment is that she died from the internal bleeding.”

For a second he seemed lost in thought and then he added: “One detail that might be interesting is

that I feel quite convinced that the woman had intercourse shortly before her death.”

Louise looked at him in surprise.

“I mean, there are traces of semen in her vagina and on both inner thighs,” he explained, “but of

course I’ll have to get that confirmed, so I’ll have to wait on the results of the tests before I can say that

with certainty. That could well take a week.”

Louise nodded. It could easily take that long since there was nothing to suggest that her death was

associated with any type of foul play. She stood up and walked back over to look at the woman’s disfigured

face.

“If I’m right about this, that might mean maybe she wasn’t that lonely after all,” Flemming said

before he went over and called down to the techs to let them know he was done.

“But still lonely enough that no one thought to report her missing even though she’s been dead

almost a week,” Louise said. She waited while Åse packed up her equipment and then said goodbye to

Flemming, who was off in the corner on the computer dictating all the autopsy details for his report—the

woman’s weight, the size of the organs, and the injuries that had been found.

They left the autopsy room with a nod to the two pathology techs, who were there to sew the body

back up before it was returned to the refrigerated room in the basement.

“There was no sign of Eik Nordstrøm when I got out to the Pathology Lab,” Louise began when Ragner

Rønholt answered his phone. “I don’t know how you usually do things, but it’s a complete waste of the

pathologist’s time if the police aren’t there from the beginning. He had to repeat the findings from the

entire external portion of the autopsy just for me.”

“Damn it,” Rønholt grumbled. “Eik didn’t show up?”

“At least not there where the rest of us were,” Louise responded and said that she was heading

back now.

“Wait a second,” her boss requested. “Just stay there. I’ll call you in a minute.”

After he hung up, Louise walked down the stairs to the lobby and stood there for a bit while she

waited for his return call. Finally she lost patience and went outside to cross the street to her car.

She had just gotten in when Rønholt’s name flashed across her cell phone display.

“Did you leave already?”

“I’m about to,” she replied, allowing him to hear in her voice that she was a bit irritated he was

having her sit around and be a wall flower.

“Could you do me a favor and pick Eik up at Ulla’s place out in Sydhavnen?” he asked. “It would

appear that he’s having a bit of a hard time getting back into things after his vacation.”

Louise sighed and asked for the address. Feeling irritated, she shrugged off Rønholt’s thanks as

she entered the street address on Sydhavnen into the GPS.

Number 67. Louise couldn’t find number 67, just 65 and 69. Between them was a closed, run-down bar

with a rusty security grille in front of the door.

Louise had just turned and was heading back to the car when a beer delivery van pulled up to the

curb and honked its horn. She turned to look at the driver, who had already hopped out of the cab and was

pulling down the truck’s wide tailgate.

She would have sworn that the bar with the peeled off Carlsberg beer ad in the window had been

sapped of any life years ago, but now a stout woman with a deep voice and coal-black hair came to the door

and struggled to open the two padlocks securing the rusty grille.

“Excuse me,” Louise began once the woman had gotten them undone. “Do you know if number

67 is around here, maybe in back somewhere?”

The woman maneuvered the grille inside the door and stepped aside as the deliveryman started

hauling crates in.

“This is number 67,” she answered as the sad smell of smoke and leftover beer wafted out behind

her.

“I’m supposed to pick Eik Nordstrøm up at Ulla’s place? Do you know her?”

The middle-aged, black-haired woman looked at Louise for a second and then nodded into the

establishment behind her.

“I’m Ulla. Ulla’s Place is my bar, and he’s in there.”

The delivery guy swapped out the draft beers while Ulla showed Louise to the very back of the

building, where two dishwashers were mounted on the wall. The carpeting on the floor stuck to her feet in

several spots and the ashtrays on the tables were still full. Ulla was working on cleaning up after last

night’s customers.

He was lying down, sprawled over four chairs that had been pushed together in a row up against the wall.

Someone had spread a little fleece blanket over him. He was snoring softly with his mouth open and

greasy, shoulder-length hair covering his forehead and hanging down over his nose.

“Honey, there’s someone here to see you,” Ulla called, placing her hand on his black leather jacket

as she began to shake him.

Louise backed up a couple of steps and cursed Rønholt.

“Oh forget it,” she said and was about to leave when Ulla stopped her.

“Give him two minutes and he’ll be ready.”

Louise stood there watching as Ulla walked around behind the bar and got a shot glass and a bottle

of Gammel Dansk, which she brought back and placed on the table before she started shaking again.

He grunted loudly as he finally and with great difficulty pushed himself up into a sitting position

and accepted the glass Ulla handed him. He closed his eyes and tipped his head back as he knocked back

the shot and quickly accepted the next one.

Then he focused his eyes and concentrated on Louise’s face.

“Who the fuck are you?” he asked in a voice that sounded as if it were being pulled through an old

iron pipe.

“Rønholt asked me to come pick you up,” she replied. “Vacation’s over.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself,” Eik grumbled and lit a cigarette from a flattened pack that was

lying on the table.

Louise stood there for a second contemplating him before she turned on her heel and left. Outside

on the sidewalk, the beer delivery guys were just shutting the truck’s tailgate, and Ulla was starting to

replace the grille.

“Wait!” called a raspy voice from inside the pub.

He came stumbling out onto the street squinting in the sunlight as he ran his hands though his

shoulder-length hair. For a second it looked as if he was going to lose his balance, but then he started

following her to the car.

“Do we know each other?” he asked, stumping out his cigarette against the curb.

Louise shook her head and introduced herself.

“You were supposed to be at the Pathology Lab three hours ago. I went in your place.”

She opened the car door and got him into the passenger’s seat. She had hardly made it around to

the driver’s side to get in before he’d leaned his head back and was asleep again.

A soft snoring sound filled the car the whole way back to the offices of the Missing Persons Task

Force, but Louise ignored it and concentrated instead on the unidentified woman, who by now had been

taken back to the basement under the Pathology Lab. There had been something vulnerable, almost

childlike about the half of her face that wasn’t disfigured by that big scar. She must have been beautiful

once. The question was just when that time might have been.

Louise left Eik Nordstrøm in the parking lot. His eyes were still closed when she slammed the car door

closed behind herself. Then she went down to her office keeping her eyes fixed on the hallway’s grey-

painted linoleum floor to mask the fury that was causing her breath to come in short, terse puffs.

She flung her bag on the floor and closed the door. The walls were still bare, but Louise

discovered that someone had hung some blinds up over the window while she’d been out.

The sun was beating into the office so she adjusted the blinds a little before sitting down at her

desk and turning on her computer. She took out the folder with the resumes and her own notes on the three

people she thought would be well suited to working with her and contemplated whether or not Henny

Heilmann might also be an option.

Her former group leader, who had been moved up to the Radio Service after the police reform, had

had a long career in homicide. She was one of the most experienced detectives Louise knew but maybe the

circus horse wasn’t up to heading back into the ring, she thought and acknowledged that Heilmann was a

wildcard. Either she would be super committed and efficient like in the old days, or maybe she’d have a

hard time getting back up to speed.

There was more of a pounding than a knocking on the door and, when it was hurled open a

moment later, Eik Nordstrøm came barging in with a couple of cardboard boxes stacked on top of a desk

chair that he was pushing in front of him with his foot.

“Ah! There’s already a chair here,” he observed, stopping in the doorway.

“What’s going on here?” Louise burst out, quickly gathering together her notes as she ascertained

that he’d managed to wet his hair a little and slick it back. She guessed he must have kept a clean T-shirt at

work and taken a quick shower in the locker room.

“I’m moving in,” he said, nodding over at the empty workspace on the other side of the window.

“I’ve always wanted to have a female partner.”

Louise stood up, taken aback.

“Well we’re not going to be working together directly,” she quickly parried. “The Special Missing

Persons Task Force is really more parallel to you guys.”

“Yeah,” he nodded in agreement, hoisting the cardboard boxes onto the desk. “And that task force

will be the two of us. I just got the message to pack my things and head down to see you.”

“Then there’s been a misunderstanding,” Louise interrupted. “Who gave you the message?”

He’d tossed his leather jacket on the floor and was already unpacking the two boxes.

“Rønholt. He assigned me to the case of the woman from the woods.”

Louise stared at him in disbelief.

“Oh. But you don’t need to sit in here to work on that case,” she tried.

“Um, yes I do, because I’m going to be working with you,” he said and coughed as if his lungs

hadn’t quite gotten going for the day yet.

Louise stood still a second as his words sank in. Then she grabbed the folder on her desk and

rushed past him before he started pushing the unneeded desk chair back out again.

“Is Rønholt in there?” she asked, standing across from her boss’s secretary. Hanne Munk had also worked

in the homicide division several years before, but only for a little while. Her big, red hair, garishly colored

clothes, and spiritual tendencies hadn’t sat well with Detective Superintendent Willumsen, so it hadn’t

taken him very many months to scare her away.

“You can’t go in there now!” she protested. “Ragner is getting ready for his meeting with the

police commissioner.”

“I have to talk to him. It’ll only take two minutes,” Louise insisted and kept moving through the

front office.

Hanne made it over in front of the door before Louise was able to raise her hand to knock.

“You can’t just barge in and disturb him.”

She was blocking Louise’s access and staring at her in outrage.

“And his schedule is actually full for the rest of the day. But of course you’re welcome to make an

appointment to meet with him later in the week.”

“Don’t give me that!” Louise fumed. She held her ground, right up in Hanne’s face, and wasn’t

planning to back down.

Just then the door opened and Ragner Rønholt practically crashed into his secretary, who was still

standing in front of the door, blocking it.

“Hey, watch where you’re standing,” he said and grasped Hanne’s shoulders to regain his balance

while smiling at Louise.

“Good, you managed to bring Eik back to life. He’s a good guy once he manages to shake off his

vacation.”

“Yeah, that’s what I wanted to see you about,” Louise responded quickly, pushing her way past

Hanne, pulling Rønholt back into his office, and shutting the door behind them.

“Our agreement was crystal clear—I was going to be in charge of finding the second person for

the new task force myself.”

She held out the resumes in front of him. “Here’s a list of the names of people I consider

qualified.”

When he took the folder, Louise remembered the little notes she’d made in the margins that she

hadn’t meant for anyone else to see and snatched the papers back out of his hands again.

“There was never any mention of your just dumping a drunkard in my lap!”

“It’s certainly not a question of my dumping anyone,” Rønholt defended with a deep furrow in his

forehead.

“Eik’s the best I have and I’m sure that together the two of you will be exquisite.”

“Exquisite?” Louise was speechless, both at his choice of words and at how effortlessly he was

pawning his colleague off on her.

“He was in a drunken stupor, asleep on some chairs in the back of a bar! When he came to enough

to sit up, he downed two shots of Gammel Dansk before even standing up. That’s not equisite. You can just

forget it. I want to bring in Lars Jørgensen. I’m sure he can transfer in quickly.”

Rønholt had walked around behind his desk. Now he looked at her.

“You’re right that Eik has a few demons that occasionally get the better of him, but sometimes

people’s weaknesses also turn out to be their strengths,” he said and added that Lars Jørgensen was

definitely a possibility. “But just give Eik a chance. I recommend that you and he begin by identifying the

woman, finding out if there’s any next of kin who need to be notified and then we can close this case.”

He looked at his watch and grabbed his jacket from the coat hook.

“I’m running a bit late. I’ve got bridge tonight and I’m supposed to bring the cheese plate, so I

won’t be back after the meeting.”

Louise walked out with him, but stopped in the doorway. Eik Nordstrøm was standing in the front

office chatting with Hanne who nodded and smiled at each word he said.

“Well, should we see if we can put a name on our Jane Doe?” Louise asked. “I mean, if you have

time, that is.”

She slipped out through the front office and was fully aware that she sounded bitter. She also

heard Eik whisper something in Hanne’s ear that made her giggle before he tore himself away and caught

up with Louise in the hallway.

“Want to get a cup of coffee?” he asked, turning to enter the kitchen.

“Thanks, but no thanks. I drink tea,” Louise said, stopping in the doorway to the Rat Hole in

surprise. The office had changed. It suddenly looked like someone had moved in. Maybe not exactly her

taste with music posters in store bought frames, but it looked occupied.

“What the…?” she exclaimed.

“I can pack it away again if it bugs you,” she heard from behind her, where Eik was standing

holding a cup of coffee and two cheese sandwiches and eyeing her.

“No, that’s fine,” she said quickly. The truth was she was just as happy to let someone else do the

decorating. It was nice to have some things around, but she didn’t really care about the details.

She walked over to the desk and got her little electric kettle out of the cupboard and found a

teabag in her purse.

“I put a black corner on the case, so now the woman is listed as dead in Interpol’s records,” Louise

summarized. She looked over at Eik, who was starting on his last cheese sandwich. “But before we send

her picture to the press, maybe we should send it around through the various police districts and Interpol?”

She waited, uncertain of what the procedure actually was. The case had been transferred to the

Missing Persons Task Force after it became clear to the local police in Holbæk that they were not

immediately able to identify the woman.

“Not that it will help the other districts that much since we don’t have a name for her,” she added

after pausing to think for a moment.

He shook his head as he continued quickly chewing. “It’ll just waste time if we wait for some

random person to recognize her. With unidentified bodies, what we usually focus on is where she was

found and then concentrate on that area.”

“Okay,” Louise said with a nod. “A forestry worker found her Thursday morning by Lake Avn in

central Zealand. I don’t know if that tells you anything?”

He shook his head and she rattled off: “Close to Hvalsø, Skov Hastrup, Særløse, Ny Tolstrup.

There’s a refugee center out there.”

“Is that down by Køge?” he asked, shaking crumbs off his black T-shirt.

“No, it’s nowhere near Køge,” Louise sighed. “It’s between Roskilde and Holbæk. The forestry

worker was clearing scrub along the lakeshore when he spotted her. He didn’t know anything about the

woman and hadn’t noticed anyone living in the woods.”

She relayed most of the information from the autopsy, but stopped when he held up his hand to

silence her.

“Let me just think.”

He took his coffee cup and walked out.

“Do we know if the local police searched the area around the cliff she fell down?” he asked when

he returned.

“In the Holbæk police report it says there were clear slide marks in the wet ground up on the top

of the cliff,” Louise said with a nod. “It had drizzled overnight, but they didn’t find any footsteps other than

hers.”

“Maybe she lived out in the woods,” he suggested. “She sounds like a loner. Homeless?”

So he had been paying attention after all. The woman could actually easily have been both.

She set down the brief police report when there was a knock on the door and Hanne stuck her head

in with a frown and reminded Louise that she still hadn’t put her name on her mail cubby.

“It would be nice if everything didn’t wind up with me. It’s all piling up!”

“We received something?” Louise asked, curious. Maybe some mail had been forwarded on from

the homicide division? She and the head of the negotiating team had agreed that she would not do any work

for them while she was busy getting the new task force up and running so she didn’t think there would be

anything from him.

“There’s an invitation to the summer party and the phone list I printed out for you.”

“And you didn’t bring them by even though you were going to stop in?” Louise asked.

“I can’t be running around hand-delivering mail to everyone in the department,” Hanne said

acrimoniously.

“Oh, you don’t usually seem to mind,” Eik interjected giving her a wink.

“You’re a special case,” Hanne purred.

Louise stared at the door for a couple of seconds after she’d closed it behind Hanne. Then she

shook her head.

“She’s not used to having competition,” Eik said tilting his chair back so he could pull a squashed

pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. “Hanne’s queen of the department here. We all try to stay in her good

graces.”

He extracted a smashed cigarette from the pack and stuck it in his mouth as he looked around for

some matches.

“You can’t smoke in here,” Louise exclaimed when he located a lighter in his desk drawer and

was about to light up.

He raised an eyebrow and studied her for a moment, but then tossed the lighter aside.

Louise set the police report on the desk.

“In terms of listed missing people,” she continued, “I started by going back one month. But then

there was just the woman up in Northern Jutland and a young man from down by Næstved. So then I went

back a year but there were no women in that age range. So finally I went back five years.”

The lists were lying in a stack in front of Louise.

“No one matches the description. Without a doubt her large scar would be listed under

distinguishing features. So she hasn’t been reported missing.”

Eik was still sitting there with his cigarette in his mouth and he seemed fidgety. “Give me the lists.

I’ll look at them,” he said, already on his way out the door with the lighter in his hand.

“Oh just go fucking smoke already so you can concentrate and we can get somewhere,” Louise

exclaimed, exasperated, and sat down to wait.

“Send me the picture you have of the woman’s face,” he asked when he returned seven minutes later.

“If she’s Danish there must be someone who recognizes her,” he stated after having studied the

picture. “That scar is so distinctive it would be impossible to mistake if you’d seen her before.”

Louise nodded.

“Should I write out a description and send the picture to the media?” he asked adding that he had a

mailing list of contacts that he usually used when they filed a missing persons report.

“Do it,” Louise said, pleased that he finally seemed to be taking some initiative. She looked at her

watch. “I have an appointment down in Roskilde, so I’m leaving a little early today.”

She still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that her friend Camilla Lind had moved into her in-law’s

big country estate in Boserup a little outside Roskilde. After his brother died and his sister had stepped

down from her position as CEO of the family business, Camilla’s boyfriend Frederik decided to leave the

U.S. and move back home to Denmark to take over the reins at Termo-Lux.

Louise certainly hadn’t seen it coming that Camilla would wind up as the lady of the house in a

country estate. She knew her friend’s little apartment next to Frederiksberg Swimming Pool had been put

up for sale and Markus had changed schools a month ago because Frederik Sachs-Smith had gotten him

into some private school or other in Roskilde. The whole thing was going so fast, and now they were going

to be getting married as well. Louise had stopped by Panduro Hobby to pick up a bunch of pearls for the

invitations, which Camilla insisted on making herself, and she’d promised to bring the pearls by after work.

She sighed at the thought, already tired of being sucked into the wedding preparations. It was as if

her friend had tumbled off the deep end of romance.

“It’s done!” Eik Nordstrøm exclaimed after a few moments of silence. “The description and picture are out

there along with the request to contact the special Missing Persons Task Force if you recognize the woman

or have any idea who she might be.”

He looked expectantly at Louise.

“Great,” she praised him and asked if he’d seen the pictures that were taken at the scene.

He shook his head.

Louise pulled them up on her screen and sent him copies.

His wrinkled face took on a serious expression as he leaned forward and studied them in

concentration.

“My mother had some flowered house coats like that. They closed up the front, too, with a bunch

of hooks and eyes,” he said. “I think that was back in the sixties. You’d think they hadn’t invented the

zipper yet. I didn’t know those things were still around.”

Louise studied the picture and nodded. Based on the clothes it looked like time had stood still for

the woman.

“I suggest we head down there ourselves and talk to the guy who found her,” he continued. “We’ll

get more out of him if we can talk to him ourselves.”

“I was planning to do that tomorrow morning,” Louise said. Since she had to go drop those

ridiculous pearls off for Camilla now, she thought. For a second she wondered if her temporary partner was

even planning to come in the next day or if she was going to have to go pick him up from somewhere.

“You go ahead to Roskilde,” he said, shutting his computer as if he were already on his way out

the door. “I can easily talk to him. Anyway there isn’t anything else for me to do right now.”

Louise took her eyes off her screen and watched him as he pulled the last cigarette out of his pack,

which he then crumpled up and tossed in the trash.

“Well, but it’s not like this is some kind of high priority case requiring overtime,” she objected,

guessing that he was the type who came in late but padded his time sheet with extra hours if he stayed later

than four in the afternoon. That wouldn’t fly with her. “You don’t even know where Lake Avn is!”

“No, but I have GPS.”

“I’m sure you can find your way to the woods, but you won’t get any further than that. There’s no

coverage once you get out there. Oh okay, let’s drive over there now.”

Usually she was the one insisting on getting things done, she thought, wondering if this was a sign

that she was getting old and complacent.

Louise stood up, studying him as he pulled on his leather jacket. No, she decided as she retrieved

her bag from the floor. Sure, she had just turned forty, but there was some life in her yet.

On her way out she stopped by Hanne’s office, where she let Eik pick up the key to one of the

division’s two cars, but when they got down to the street she held out her hand.

“I’m driving,” she said.

They drove in silence. Louise turned her head several times to check if Eik had fallen asleep, but he was

sitting alertly with his broad hands folded in his lap, paying attention as she took a left turn and drove past

an old, shut down sawmill with big, broken window panes. There was an eerie emptiness to the abandoned

wooden buildings.

Way up at the edge of the woods there was a U-shaped farm building with a thatched roof, which

was almost hidden away behind the tree leaves. It was tucked away behind a white picket fence and a big

gate. Louise slowed down a little as they drove by. For many years, her dream had been to live in an old

hunter’s lodge.

“There are a boy scout cabin way up by the meadow, where the cliff drops down to the lake,” she

explained as they drove down Bukkeskovvej. “But if we drive up to the cabin, we’ll be quite a ways from

where the woman went over, so I’m going to keep going out toward Lake Avn and then we’ll take the trail.

It’s faster.”

“Sounds like you know your way around these parts,” Eik said, eyeing her with curiosity.

“This is where I’m from,” Louise admitted, trying to avoid the largest potholes in the road. “Well,

not from exactly here, but from Lerbjerg over on the other side of the woods. I spent most of my childhood

on these roads and when we got a little older we used to hang out by Lake Avn and build bonfires.”

She neglected to mention to him that as a rule there had also been a ton of beer involved, not to

mention passing joints around. Not that she had smoked them, but she used to lie in the grass with everyone

else gazing up at the stars.

“Do you still come out here?”

“My parents live here,” she replied. “But it’s been years since I’ve been down to the lake.”

Liar! Louise often went down there when she needed to clear her mind. To her, Lake Avn had

always been the most beautiful and most peaceful spot on earth. She loved to sit up in a tree while the sun

set and watch how the light made the inky black surface of the tree-lined lake look, as if it were on fire. It

was the ultimate meditation.

But that was none of his business. Nor that her foster son Jonas had gone with her the last time.

Pretty much it was none of Eik’s business what she did.

“Here,” she said, pulling off to the side. “We’ll park up here.”

The water at the bottom of the hill was shimmering between the trees and a narrow footpath led straight

down. They used to take their bikes down it when she was a kid and it had also been fun on horseback,

especially when you went back up it at a gallop.

She pointed ahead and showed him that you could also walk a little further and take the forest road

down. It wasn’t as steep.

“Is there any fishing out here?” he asked once they were out of the car.

Louise nodded, suddenly remembering the time she had caught some small carp with a homemade

fishing pole, but there were probably also some trout or perch.

“There’s a path down by the water so you can walk all the way around the lake.”

She pointed into the woods to their right. “We’re heading over that way.”

They had to walk a quarter of the way around the lake to get to the spot where the forest worker

had found the woman.

“Shh!” Eik suddenly whispered, putting a hand on Louise’s arm.

She stopped talking and heard a child crying. The heart-rending sound rose up through the trees.

“People come out here on picnics,” she explained, lowering her voice. “There are picnic tables

down there.”

A lot of people came to Lake Avn when the weather was good. She’d come out here several times

on field trips with her class when she was going to school in Hvalsø. The girls had sat up in the meadow

making wreaths out of wildflowers to put in their hair while the boys carved their initials in the tree trunks

or swung out over the lake on the rope than hung from one of the big trees. That’s how she remembered it

anyway.

Her thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the sound of the child who was now crying so hard that

for a second she was nervous it might not be able to breathe.

“Why isn’t anyone coming to comfort the child?” Eik grunted, already heading down the steep

path, grabbing ahold of a couple of bushy branches to keep from slipping.

She locked the car and followed him.

On the flat section of the path, where the rope swing had been hanging from the tall tree for as long as

Louise could remember, she spotted three small children. The child who was crying was a boy in a striped

windbreaker and jeans. He was sitting on the ground and sobbing so hard that his whole bright-red race was

scrunched up, his eyes squeezed shut. Next to him another blond boy was lying on his stomach. He was

crawling along over the dirt like a little larva, making a series of loud, disgruntled sounds that were

threatening to turn into crying.

Louise stopped and looked over at the last child, a girl in loose red clothes, who was sitting

dangerously close to the edge of the water with her fingers in her mouth, her face covered in dirt.

Two years old, three at the most, Louise guessed. Who leaves such little kids alone in the woods

so close to a lake? She sped up when the girl stood up just then and toddled over to the lake, where she

plopped down onto the ground and leaned forward as if she wanted to grab hold of the small ripples that

were breaking against the shore.

Before Louise could get there, Eik was over next to the girl and in a flash he lifted her up and

carried her over to the bench by the swing.

“Hello!” Louise yelled and looked around. But there obviously weren’t any grownups nearby.

Eik went back and squatted down next to the little boy who was still crying so hard that his little

body was shuddering. He cautiously lifted the child up onto his lap and rocked him a little.

“There must be someone here,” Louise exclaimed, scouring the area with her eyes.

Eik had all three of the children safely over by the bench. Now he was walking around with the

sobbing boy in his arms while the other two crawled around on the ground.

“Hello!” Louise called out again. “Will you stay with them while I go look?”

Without waiting for his answer she started running over toward the boathouse following the path

along the lakeshore. She bent over several times to get under the branches that jutted across the narrow

path, feeling anger throb in her temples. She could just picture it. A couple of young people who were more

preoccupied with each other than the kids they’d brought along for a picnic. She had done a little

babysitting herself at one time while she was in school and had also brought a boyfriend along once or

twice. When the kids were just sitting around playing, it was pretty easy to forget about them.

“Hello?” she yelled again, stopping by the shack where the forestry worker kept a boat. There was

a big padlock on the door and the place was deserted.

She stood there for a second looking around. She could hear that the boy was still crying, but it

didn’t sound quite as desperate. Louise continued up to the forest road, which most people took when they

were going down to the lake and she was breathing hard by the time she reached the top, but there wasn’t

anyone there either.

When she got back Eik was sitting on the ground with the three kids. The crying boy was almost

asleep in his lap and the other two were each scratching at the dirt with a stick.

“I’ll try going around the other way,” Louise said, pointing back behind them. There was no wind

up in the treetops. Louise listened for a second before she started running the opposite direction.

There wasn’t a proper path. People had just walked there so many times that the dirt was

compacted. Stumps stuck up in several places, which people tripped over if they weren’t paying attention.

“Hello!” Louise called, but fell silent a few meters later when she spotted a stroller that had tipped

over on its side and was blocking the path. From a distance she could see that it was one of those dark blue

institutional strollers. The kind with multiple seats that daycare workers and nursery schools usually used.

“Crap,” she whispered when the fear struck her for a moment that there was another child in the

stroller, because it was totally quiet.

Louise jumped over a log and ran over to the stroller, which was lying with its underside toward

her. Relief coursed through her when she determined it was empty. A diaper bag was pushed down in the

fourth seat along with a white cloth diaper. On the ground a little ways away there was a clear plastic bag

with a couple of sippy cups and a roll of rice crackers, which had been hurled out of the mesh. As if the

stroller had been moving fast when it tipped over.

With increasing concern, Louise scanned the area again while calling out a couple more times

before she headed back to Eik and pointed to the path.

“Their stroller is over here.”

The boy who had been crying was now souns asleep on Eik’s lap while the other two were starting

to whimper.

“Why don’t you go get it so we can put them in it,” he suggested.

She nodded and gazed up through the scattered tree trunks on the hillside, up toward the forest

road with a nagging fear, fully aware that no one voluntarily left three small children by the edge of a

wooded lake. She felt the adrenaline starting to pump.

Then she went back to get the stroller.

It was when Louise leaned down to grab the metal frame that she spotted her. On the ground between two

dense bushes, a woman’s naked leg was sticking out with bloody scratches from the bush’s thorns.

Louise dropped the stroller and ran over to the bushes.

“Hello?” she called, this time more quietly. “Hello!”

She squatted down and used the sleeve of her jacket to protect her arm as she reached into the

thorns to lift the branches aside. The lower half of the woman’s body was exposed and her body was lying

in a contorted position, lifeless.

“There’s a woman over here,” she yelled loudly without thinking about the fact that the children

would realize there was something wrong. Then she pulled out her cell phone and dialed 112.

“The easiest way to find it is if you drive into Bistrup Woods along Skovvej from Hvalsø,” she

explained to the operator on duty when he admitted he wasn’t familiar with the area. “From there tell them

to just keep going straight, past the Skovridergården. I’ll walk up to the road so I can guide them the last bit

of the way.”

Louise couldn’t see the woman’s face, so she let got of the branches and stood up to move over to the other

side of the bushes. The thorns tore at her pants legs as she forced her way through the thicket.

The woman’s forehead was severely bruised. It almost looked as if her head had slammed into a

tree trunk, Louise thought and looked at the woman’s eyes, which were staring blindly up into the tree

leaves over the dense branches of the bush.

Louise didn’t need to check to know that the woman was no longer alive. She contemplated her

face. The woman was probably about the same age she was, Louise guessed, and had a stout build. Her hair

was gathered into a ponytail, but only a little of it was still in the elastic band. Louise looked at a tuft that

had been yanked out.

That might suggest that maybe the woman had tried to run away and then her attacker grabbed her

long, brown hair and pulled her back. The injuries to the woman’s face were so brutal that Louise’s first

thought was that strong, out-of-control emotions had been involved. It appeared as if she’d been beaten to a

pulp.

Louise took a couple of steps back and stood for a moment looking around. The first thing that hit

her was that someone had tried to hide the woman under the thicket, but she was surprised that it had been

done so sloppily. If anyone walked down the forest road and looked down they would see her.

There was a rubber boot and a pair of pants a few yards away. Louise walked over and bent down

over the light jeans. The button had been torn out of the buttonhole and the zipper was broken. The attacker

had just ripped the pants off the woman without undoing them first.

Then some dark shadows on the dirt a little ways away caught her eye, but she couldn’t tell if they

were traces of blood spread out over the green forest floor. It looked as if the assault had happened in

among the trees, she thought and hoped that the 112 operator had understood her explanation so her

colleagues could find their way here. For a minute Louise thought about calling him back as she went back

to Eik and the kids. She left the stroller where it was.

“She’s dead,” she said. “We’re going to have to leave the stroller there until the police get here.”

He nodded. All three kids were asleep, lying side by side on the ground.

One of them was sucking his thumb.

“Is it a crime?” he asked quietly, standing up.

Louise nodded.

“If she’s a daycare worker, I’m sure it won’t be long before some of the parents react to the fact

that their children are missing,” Eik guessed.

Louise nodded, having had the same thought herself. The dead woman wouldn’t be hard to

identify. She probably lived nearby, otherwise she wouldn’t be walking down to the lake with the kids.

“I’m going to walk up to the crossroads and wait for the police and the ambulance,” Louise said,

but then hesitated. “Or do you want to go up and meet them?”

He quickly shook his head.

“There’s no way I can find my way around out here,” he said, pulling his cigarettes out of his

jacket pocket.

Louise started walking up the steep path. Her legs felt heavy and she had to really work the last bit

of the way. She walked to the right along the forest road and after the first turn she noted that it was farther

to the crossroads and the little triangle where the fork in the road was than she remembered. For a second

she regretted not having taken the car.

When she finally reached the larger forest road, she sat down on a log in the grass along the side

of the road and sent Camilla a text message. She doubted she was going to be able to drop off the pearls.