Disgrace Page 2

  Whatever the homicide chief’s motives were, Carl didn’t like them.

  ‘She received top marks at the police academy, but she failed the driver’s test, and that means you’re done for, no matter how talented you are,’ Jacobsen said, spinning his swollen cigarette pack around for the fifteenth time. ‘Maybe she was also a little too thin-skinned to work in the field, but she was determined to join the police, so she learned how to be a secretary. And she’s been at Station City for the past year. Then the last few weeks she’s been Mrs Sørensen’s substitute, who of course is back now.’

  ‘Why didn’t you send her back to City, if I may ask?’

  ‘Why? Well, there was some internal hullabaloo. Nothing that relates to us.’

  ‘OK.’ The word ‘hullabaloo’ sounded ominous.

  ‘At any rate, Carl, you now have a secretary. And she’s a good one.’

  He said that pretty much about everyone.

  ‘She seemed very, really nice, I think,’ said Assad under the fluorescent lights in Department Q, trying to make Carl feel better.

  ‘She started a hullabaloo down at City, I’ll have you know. That’s not so nice.’

  ‘Hulla ... ? You’ll have to say that one more time, Carl.’

  ‘Forget it, Assad.’

  His assistant nodded. Then he gulped a substance smelling of mint tea that he’d poured into his cup. ‘Listen to this, Carl. The case you put me on top of while you were away, I couldn’t get very far with. I looked here and there and all impossible places, but the case files have all gone missing during the moving mess upstairs.’

  Carl looked up. Gone missing? No shit? But all right – something good had happened today, after all.

  ‘Yes, completely gone. But then I looked a little through the piles of folders and found this one. It’s very interesting.’

  Assad handed him a pale green case file and stood as still as a pillar of salt, an expectant expression on his face.

  ‘Are you planning on standing there while I read?’

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ he said, setting his cup down on Carl’s desk.

  As he opened the file, Carl puffed his cheeks with air and slowly exhaled.

  The case was quite old. From the summer of 1987, to be exact. The year he and a mate had taken the train to the Copenhagen Carnival and a red-headed girl who couldn’t get the rhythm out of her loins had taught him how to samba – which, when they ended the evening on a blanket behind a bush in Rosenborg Castle Gardens, was heavenly. He had been twenty-odd years old then, and nothing was virgin territory after that.

  It had been a good summer, 1987. The summer he was transferred from Vejle to the Antonigade Police Station.

  The murders had to have been committed eight or ten weeks after the carnival, at roughly the same time as the redhead decided to throw her samba body across the next country bumpkin. Yes, it was precisely the period when Carl was making his first nightly rounds in Copenhagen’s narrow streets. Actually, it was odd that he didn’t recall anything about the case; it was certainly bizarre enough.

  Two siblings, a girl and a boy aged seventeen and eighteen respectively, were found beaten to a pulp in a summer cottage not far from Dybesø, near Rørvig. The girl’s body was badly bruised and she had suffered terribly during the beating, as evidenced by the defensive wounds.

  He scanned the text. No sexual assault, nothing stolen.

  Then he read the autopsy report once more and riffled through the newspaper clippings. There were only a few, but the headlines were as large as they could get.

  ‘Beaten to death,’ wrote Berlingske Tidende, providing a description of the bodies that was unusually detailed for this old, highbrow newspaper.

  They were found in the living room, by the fireplace, the girl in a bikini and her brother naked, a half-bottle of cognac gripped in his hand. He had been killed by a single blow to the back of his head, with a blunt object later identified as the claw hammer discovered in a tuft of heather somewhere between Flyndersø and Dybesø.

  The motive was unknown, but suspicion quickly fell on a group of young boarding-school pupils who were staying at the lavish summer residence of one of their parents near Flyndersø. On numerous occasions they had been involved in skirmishes at the local nightclub, The Round, where a few locals got seriously hurt.

  ‘Have you caught up to where it says who the suspects were?’

  From beneath his eyebrows, Carl glanced up at Assad. That ought to be enough of an answer, but Assad wouldn’t give up.

  ‘Yes, of course you have. And the report also suggests that their fathers were all the kind who earned lots of money. Didn’t many do that in the gold-eighties, or whatever it was called?’

  Carl nodded. He’d now reached that part of the report.

  Yes, Assad had it right. Their fathers were all well known, even today.

  He skimmed the group’s names a few times. It was enough to produce beads of sweat on his brow, because it wasn’t just their fathers who’d earned enormous sums and become well-known figures. Years later some of their offspring had become famous, too. Born with a silver spoon in their mouths, they now held the golden spoon. They were Ditlev Pram, founder of numerous exclusive private hospitals, Torsten Florin, internationally recognized designer, and stock market analyst Ulrik Dybbøl Jensen. All stood on the top rung of Denmark’s ladder of success, as had the now deceased shipping magnate Kristian Wolf. The final two members of the gang stood out from the rest. Kirsten-Marie Lassen had also been a part of the jet set, but no one knew where she was today. Bjarne Thøgersen, the one who’d pleaded guilty to killing the siblings and now sat in prison, came from more modest means.

  When Carl was done reading, he tossed the file on the table.

  ‘Right. So I don’t understand how this case got down to us,’ Assad said. Normally he would have smiled at this point, but he didn’t.

  Carl shook his head. ‘I don’t, either. A man is in prison for the crime. He confessed, got a life sentence and is now behind bars. As a matter of fact, he turned himself in, so why the doubts? Case closed!’ He clapped the file shut.

  ‘Except ...’ Assad bit his lip. ‘He didn’t turn himself in until nine years later.’

  ‘So what? He did turn himself in. When he committed the murders he was only eighteen years old. Maybe he realized, as he grew older, that a bad conscience never fades.’

  ‘Fades?’

  Carl sighed. ‘Yes, fades. Withers, dies. A bad conscience doesn’t go away with time, Assad. On the contrary.’

  Assad was clearly puzzled about something. ‘The Nykøbing Sjælland and Holbæk police worked on the case together. And the Mobile Investigation Unit, too. But, who sent it to us, I can’t tell. Can you?’

  Carl lowered his eyes to the file’s cover. ‘No, it doesn’t say anywhere. Very peculiar.’ If one of those three units hadn’t sent them the file, who had? And if the case had ended in a conviction, why bother reopening it at all?

  ‘Could it have something to do with this?’ Assad asked. He riffled through the file until he found a document from Revenue and Customs, and handed it to Carl. ‘Annual Report’, it said at the top. It was addressed to Bjarne Thøgersen, residing in Albertslund County in Vridløselille State Prison. The man who had killed the two youths.

  ‘Look!’ Assad was pointing at the gigantic figure in the stock revenue line. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think he comes from a wealthy family, and now he’s got enough time to play with his money. Apparently he’s done pretty well with it. Where are you going with this?’

  ‘I’ll have you know, Carl, that he doesn’t come from a wealthy family. He was the only member of the boarding-school gang who attended on a scholarship. You can see that he was quite different from the others. Take a look.’ He turned the pages back.

  Carl propped up his head with one hand.

  That was the thing about holidays.

  They came to an end.

  4. Autumn 1986

  A
lthough they were six very different people, the fifth-form students had something in common. When classes were over, they would meet in the forest or on the nature paths and light their hash pipes, even if rain was bucketing down. They kept the paraphernalia within reach in the hollow of a tree trunk; Bjarne made sure of that. Cecil fags, matches, tinfoil and the finest dope money could buy on the square in Næstved. Standing in a cluster, they would mix fresh air with a few quick drags, careful not to get so stoned that their pupils would give them away.

  Because it wasn’t about getting high. It was about being their own masters and defying the authorities in the biggest way possible. And smoking hash right next to the boarding school was pretty much the worst you could do.

  So they passed the pipe around and mocked the teachers, trying to outdo each other imagining what they would do to them if they could.

  And that’s how they spent most of the autumn until the day Kristian and Torsten were nearly caught with hash on their breath, which not even ten cloves of garlic could hide. After that they decided to eat it, because then there was no scent.

  It was shortly afterwards that everything began in earnest.

  When they were caught in the act, they were standing beside a thicket close to the stream, high as kites and acting silly, while melting frost dripped from the leaves.

  One of the younger boys suddenly appeared from behind a bush, staring straight at them. He was a blond, ambitious little shit, an irritating goody-two-shoes on the prowl for a beetle he could display in biology class.

  Instead, what he found was Kristian busily shoving the whole works back into the hollow of the tree, while Torsten, Ulrik and Bjarne giggled like idiots and Ditlev’s hands rummaged inside Kimmie’s shirt. She, too, was laughing like a lunatic. This shit was some of the best they’d ever had.

  ‘I’m telling the headmaster!’ the boy screamed at them, noticing too late how quickly the older students’ laughter fell silent. A sprightly boy who was used to taunting others, he could have easily outrun them, given how loaded they were. But the thicket was overgrown and the danger he’d put them in too great for them to let that happen.

  Bjarne had the most to lose if he were kicked out, so once they got hold of the little twit, he was the one Kristian pushed forward. And it was he who landed the first blow.

  ‘You know my father can crush your father’s business, if he wants to,’ the boy shouted, ‘so bugger off, Bjarne, you pile of shit! Otherwise it’ll be worst for you. Let go of me, you idiot.’

  They hesitated. The boy had made life terribly difficult for many of his classmates. His father, uncle and big sister had been pupils at the school before him, and were regular contributors to the school fund. Giving the kind of donations Bjarne was dependent on.

  Then Kristian stepped forward. He didn’t have the same financial concerns. ‘We’ll give you twenty thousand kroner to keep your mouth shut,’ he said, meaning it.

  ‘Twenty thousand kroner!’ the boy snorted mockingly. ‘All I have to do is phone my father once, and he’ll send me double that amount.’ Then he spat in Kristian’s face.

  ‘Damn you, you little shit,’ Kristian said, punching him. ‘If you say anything, we’ll kill you.’ The boy fell backwards against a tree trunk, breaking a pair of ribs with an audible crack.

  For a moment he lay there, gasping in pain, but his eyes remained defiant. Then Ditlev came forward.

  ‘We can choke you right now, no problem. Or we can hold you under water in the stream. Or we can let you go and give you the twenty thousand kroner to keep your mouth shut. If you go back now and tell everyone you fell, they’ll believe you. What do you say, you little shit?’

  The boy didn’t respond.

  Ditlev went and stood right over him, curious, searching. The little bastard’s reaction fascinated him. With a sudden movement he raised his hand as if to strike, but the boy still didn’t react, so he whacked him hard on the head. When the boy crumpled in fright, Ditlev struck again, smiling. It was a tremendous feeling.

  Later he told the others how that slap had been the first real rush of his life.

  ‘Me, too,’ Ulrik grinned, shuffling towards the shocked boy. Ulrik was the biggest of them all, and his clenched fist put an ugly mark on the boy’s cheek.

  Kimmie protested weakly, but was neutralized by a fit of laughter that flushed all the birds from the underbrush.

  They carried the boy back to school and watched as the ambulance came to pick him up. Some of the gang were concerned the boy would rat on them, but he never did. In fact, he never returned. According to rumour, his father took him back to Hong Kong, but that might not have been true.

  A few days later, they attacked a dog in the forest, beating it to death.

  After that there was no turning back.

  5

  On the wall above the three panorama windows was inscribed the word ‘Caracas’. The manor had been constructed using vast sums earned in the coffee trade.

  Ditlev Pram had instantly recognized the building’s potential. A few pillars here and there, walls of icy, green glass elevated yards in the air. Straight rows of water basins trickling water and manicured lawns with futuristic sculptures stretching towards the Sound were all that was required to create the newest private hospital on the Rungsted coast. Dental and plastic surgery were the specialties here. It wasn’t an original idea, but it was incredibly lucrative for Ditlev and his Indian and Eastern European staff of doctors and dentists.

  After his older brother and two younger sisters inherited the enormous fortune their father had accumulated through stock speculation and a series of hostile takeovers in the eighties, Ditlev managed his money craftily. By now his empire had expanded to include sixteen hospitals, with four new ones on the drawing board. He was making good progress towards realizing his ambition to channel fifteen per cent of the profits from all of northern Europe’s breast-implant operations and facelifts into his account. It was hard to find one wealthy woman north of the Black Forest who hadn’t had nature’s caprices adjusted on one of Ditlev Pram’s steel tables.

  In short, life was good.

  His only concern was Kimmie. Eleven years with her rudimentary existence in the back of his mind was long enough.

  He straightened his Mont Blanc fountain pen, which was slightly askew on his desk, and glanced at his Breitling watch again.

  There was plenty of time. Aalbæk would arrive in twenty minutes. Five minutes after that Ulrik would pay him a visit, and maybe Torsten, too, but who knew?

  He rose and made his way down ebony-clad corridors, past the hospital wing and the operating rooms. He nodded agreeably to everyone who knew he was the unchallenged man at the top, and pushed through the swing doors into the kitchen on the lowest level, with its fine view of the ice-blue sky over the Sound.

  He shook the cook’s hand and praised him until he blushed, patted his assistants on the shoulder and then disappeared into the laundry.

  After many calculations, he knew that Berendsen Textile Service could deliver the bed sheets faster and cheaper, but that wasn’t the point of having your own on-site laundry facility. It was handy, of course, but so was having easy access to the six Philippine girls he’d hired to do the work. What did money matter?

  He noted how the young, dark-skinned women recoiled at the sight of him, and, as always, it amused him. So he grabbed the nearest one and dragged her into the linen cupboard. She looked frightened, but she’d been through it before. She had the narrowest hips and the smallest breasts, but she was also the most experienced. Manila’s brothels had given her a solid training and whatever he did to her now was nothing by comparison.

  She pulled his trousers down and, without being told, latched on to his cock. While she rubbed his belly with one hand and masturbated him in her mouth with the other, he punched her shoulders and arms.

  With this one he never came; his orgasm settled into his tissue in another way. His adrenalin was pumping fast as he landed his blows, an
d after a few minutes his tank was full.

  He stepped back, hoisted her up by the hair and rammed his tongue deep in her mouth, yanking her underwear down and forcing a pair of fingers into her vagina. By the time he thrust her back on the floor, they’d both had more than enough.

  Then he straightened his clothes, shoved a thousand-krone bill in her mouth and departed the laundry, giving a friendly nod to all. They seemed relieved, but they shouldn’t have been. He was going to be at the Caracas clinic for the whole of the following week. The girls would come to know who was boss.

  The private detective looked like shit that morning, in stark contrast to Ditlev’s shiny office. It was all too clear that the scrawny man had spent the entire night on the streets of Copenhagen. Yet wasn’t that what they paid him for?

  ‘What’s the word, Aalbæk?’ Ulrik grunted next to Ditlev, while stretching his legs under the conference table. ‘Any news in the case of the missing Kirsten-Marie Lassen?’ Ulrik always opened his conversations with Aalbæk that way, Ditlev thought, as he stared with annoyance at the dark grey waves beyond the panorama windows.

  He wished to hell this would all be over soon, so that Kimmie wouldn’t be gnawing at his memory all the time. When they got hold of her, they would make her vanish for ever. He was sure he would figure out a way.

  The private detective craned his neck and suppressed a yawn. ‘The locksmith at the central train station has seen Kimmie a few times. She goes around dragging a suitcase, and last time he saw her she was wearing a tartan skirt. The same outfit she wore when the woman near Tivoli spotted her. But as far as I’m aware, Kimmie isn’t a regular at the train station. In fact, there’s nothing about her that’s regular. I’ve asked everyone in the station. Security, police, homeless people, shopkeepers. A few of them know of her, but they don’t know where she lives or even who she is.’