“I’ve only been here two years,” said Grete. “In fact none of us in Vilhelmina were here at that time.”
“You made the bracelet,” said Tobias. “Who asked you to make it? Who paid for it? How did they pay? Cash or card, or cheque?”
“Oh, I don’t take credit cards,” said Berit. “I don’t have the machine for that. People give me a cheque, or cash.”
“So you keep a record of payments and receipts,” said Tobias. “For tax purposes. With names and addresses.” He held his breath.
“I tell the taxman my income and I keep receipts,” said Berit. “But only for seven years. I don’t have any receipts going back further. Or if I have, I don’t know where they are.” She paused. “I think I only asked Lennart to pay for the silver in the ring and not the workmanship. He didn’t have much money.”
“Just a minute,” said Tobias. “You made a ring as well as a bracelet?”
“I made a ring for Lennart. For him to give to Emily. He couldn’t afford a bracelet like the one she gave him. So he asked me to make a ring for her instead, engraved with
Together Forever
in Danish. You could read it both ways. Together Forever. Forever Together. Wasn’t that a wonderful idea as well?”
“It looks like an expensive bracelet,” said Tobias.
“It was,” said Berit. “Solid silver, hand engraved. But Emily had the money. She insisted on paying me what I’d normally charge. She said she could afford it. I think her people were well-off. She had some kind of allowance.”
A rich drop-out, thought Tobias. Plenty of money and no inclination to work.
“Emily was a waitress in a fishing hotel for a few months and Lennart had a summer job in a bar,” said Berit. “They played music in the bar as well.”
“The bracelet is dated 1997,” said Tobias.
“So long ago?" Berit shook her head in wonder. “It seems like yesterday.”
You might remember a bit more if it was yesterday, thought Tobias. No records. He kept the irritation out of his voice. “Do you remember when and for how long they were here?”
“I can’t be sure about that,” said Berit. “They were definitely here for at least one summer because I remember going to visit them at the campsite and thinking they were lucky it was a warm summer and it didn’t rain. So that must have been 1996 because that was a good summer. And they must have been here in 1997 because the last thing I do is engrave the date.”
“You were friendly with them,” said Grete. “Did you never send a letter or postcard or email to them? Did you never ask them for an address?”
“I don’t remember them leaving,” said Berit. “They were probably gone before I had time to get an address. I didn’t have email then. Maybe someone else has an address for them.”
“Who might that be?”
Berit made a helpless gesture. “I don’t know,” she said. “But they were well known around here.”
They heard the sound of a car drawing up outside, the murmur of voices, the slamming of a car door, a shout of “Bye now, thanks.”
“That’ll be Jossi back from Dorotea,” said Berit. “He was getting a lift from our neighbour.”
The front door opened. A thin, bony-faced man came in. “Johan wouldn’t stay for coffee. He says hello to you, Berit.” He stopped abruptly, on seeing Tobias.
“These are police officers, Jossi,” said Berit. “They’re asking about a Danish couple that used to come here. Emily and Lennart.”
“Those two were not criminals,” said Jossi immediately. “Two more honest souls you will not find between here and heaven. They were warriors for the environment. But neither of them would hurt a fly. They had only gentle bones in their bodies.”
He darted forward and shook hands with Tobias and Grete.
“I’m afraid I bring bad news,” said Tobias. “Your wife has identified a bracelet we found with the remains of a body in Jutland. We think the remains might be those of your friend Lennart.”
Jossi looked shocked.
“We think he was murdered,” said Tobias.
Jossi pulled out a chair from the table and sat down.
“We lost touch with them,” he said. “I’m sorry about that.” He shook his head. “Why would anyone want to kill Lennart?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Tobias. “First, we need to be sure it was Lennart. Do you know any person who had an address for him or for Emily? Who knows their surnames?”
“Maybe the Lake Hotel,” said Berit.
“Emily worked there for a while.”
“I know it,” said Grete.
Tobias took a card from his briefcase. “Here is my number. Contact me if you remember anything more. Thank you for the tea and delicious biscuits.” He added casually, as though he had just thought of it, “Did either Emily or Lennart do drugs?”
Berit and Jossi exchanged a quick glance.
Jossi said, “If you mean did they smoke the occasional spliff, yes, they did. And dropped a tab or two of Ecstasy, probably. If you mean were they seriously into drugs? Definitely not. They weren’t even big drinkers. They were more the herbal tea type.”
Berit said, “When you find Emily’s address, let us know. We’d like to be in touch with her again.”
Tobias looked back as he turned the car in the clearing Berit and Jossi were standing contentedly, hand in hand, in the doorway, gazing at the lake. He remembered holding hands with Karren at the northernmost point of Denmark. He saw again in his minds eye the ripple where the North Sea meets the Skaggerak. He recalled his sense of wonder when he looked at Karren, thinking “we’re going to have a baby,” and the rush of tenderness that led him to clutch her hand more tightly, led him to say, “let’s get married.” Where did all that tenderness go? He had reached the main road. Two cyclists, riding abreast, their jackets floating in the wind, dropped into single file to allow the car to overtake them and raised their hands in salute. They looked flushed and happy. Should he telephone Sofie when he got back?
He realised Grete was speaking to him. “We don’t have a big drug problem up here,” she said. “Alcohol, yes. There’s not much to do except get drunk. I’m hoping for a transfer to Ostersund.”
Tobias thought there probably wasn’t much to do in Ostersund either.
A sign for the Lake Hotel loomed up. Tobias drove along the shores of the lake to a three-storey building overlooking a marina. Waders and fishing rods were stacked on the long wooden veranda. They were greeted by a young dark-haired girl with a foreign accent, Spanish? Portuguese? Tobias wasn’t sure. They showed their ID. The receptionist picked up the telephone.
“There are two police officers here who wish to speak to you, Hanne.”
A moment later, a harassed looking woman wearing a white chef’s bonnet and apron appeared in the lobby. She ushered Tobias and Grete into a small office behind the desk.
“You have come at a bad time,” she said. “Why did you not warn me you were coming? We could have fixed a better time. What do you want?” She was cross and abrupt.
Tobias and Grete mollified her with explanations and apologies.
“I’m sorry I was abrupt with you,” she said. “I remember Emily. Emily Rasmussen. A hard worker. She was here for a couple of summers. It was before we built the extension so it must have been before 2001. I don’t know if I had an address in Denmark for her. She lived on a campsite. There might be an address in our records but I haven’t the time to go through them.” She pulled open the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. “The ledgers from 1990, the year we opened, to the year we did the extension are all in here. You can go through them yourselves.”
She left like a whirlwind.
Grete took the ledger for 2000 and sat down at the desk. Tobias balanced the ledger for 2001 ledger on the top of the filing cabinet. They worked in silence.
“No Emily in this one.”
Grete swivelled round and replaced the ledger in the drawer.
“Or in this one,” said Tobias.
They had no luck with 2000 and 1999 either.
Grete was running her eye down a page in April 1997 when she heard Tobias exclaim, “Got her. June sixteen, 1998. Emily. 15 hours. No address. There must be an address somewhere. Maybe with the first entry.” Tobias flicked back through the pages. “Emily. Emily R. Emily R.” He closed the book.
“Maybe there’s one here.” Grete leafed through the ledger for 1997. “Nothing in April.” Pause. “Nothing in May.” She gave a cry of triumph. “Here she is. June twenty-second. It must be the first day she started working here. Emily Rasmussen. And there’s an address in Denmark.” She gave the ledger to Tobias.
They grinned at each other. Tobias glanced at the address for Emily Rasmussen.
“Skanderborg. Our lake country. But not as much water as around here.” He fished out his phone and composed a text.
“Bogman Lennart. No surname. Girlfriend Emily Rasmussen. Skandeborg address. Will go there.” He sent the text to Eddy and pushed the phone back into his pocket.
19.
Eddy was sitting outside a canal-side café in Aarhus enjoying the last of the evening sun and drinking beer with a Pilates teacher he’d met three months earlier while investigating a series of robberies at an expensive private gym. The stolen items – money, watches, jewellery – were found in the flat of a part-time receptionist who’d been copying the locker keys. The Pilates teacher, who, along with the rest of the staff had been under suspicion, showed her gratitude, and continued to show it in an enticingly physical way. She was young, blonde, slim and sexually adventurous but, as Eddy soon discovered, otherwise boring and humourless. He was wondering how much longer they were going to sit staring at the canal before one of them suggested going back to his or her flat – and somehow the idea didn’t thrill him as it should - when the text from Tobias flashed up on his phone. Eddy read it with a sense of release. He had an excuse to leave.
“Urgent request from my boss,” he said, trying to sound disappointed. “I have to go back to work.” He drained his beer, gave the Pilates teacher a quick hug and sprinted away.
Katrine was at the reception desk in headquarters talking to a man in blue overalls and an orange visibility jacket when a ptinkle sound from the phone in her right pocket told her she had a text message. She ignored it because she was holding in her right hand, at arms length, a clear plastic bag containing what appeared to be two dirt-encrusted bones. One was approximately 20 centimetres long and 5 centimetres in diameter, the other was shorter, thinner and appeared to be jointed. The man in the blue overalls and visibility jacket had just handed the bag to her. His name was Carl Andersen and he was a supervisor at the city’s waste disposal depot.
“I didn’t know what else to do with them,” he said. “One of the team saw them when he was emptying one of the underground containers. Orvik, he’s a sensible sort, very reliable. He called me over. They weren’t in a bag. It’s mostly household waste in plastic bags in that sector but they weren’t in a bag. They were just mixed in with a lot of other rubbish.”
“What sector?”
“Gellerupparken. It looked like someone had just chucked them into one of the bins. We thought at first they might be rubber bones. Some kind of joke. But it isn’t anyone’s birthday. Nobody was leaving the team or getting married. When I picked one of them up. Even with thick rubber gloves on, I could tell it was a real bone. It could be an animal bone I said to Orvik, but I’ve never seen a dog with a femur that length. Unless it’s a bone from a deer. They could be human bones we’d best take them to the police, I said. I put them in a bag for him to take them down here. But he was in the middle of his shift and there was another truck coming in with a load so I brought them here myself. What do you think?”
“I think you should stop unloading until we know if these are human bones or not,” said Katrine decisively, although inside she was thinking what if I get bawled out for stopping the whole system when the bones turn out not to be human after all?
“I stopped everything before I left,” said Carl Andersen. “They’re waiting to hear from me.”
“Good,” said Katrine. That was a relief. But what if she couldn’t get hold of Harry Norsk? And even if he came straightaway, could she order the city’s waste disposal system to stop - at who knew what cost and consequences for the always delicate relations between the police and the city council – until Harry decided if the bones were human or not?
She stood holding the bag and its grisly contents at arms length, wondering if she should telephone the Chief Superintendent whom she knew was addressing a conference in Copenhagen that evening because he’d told the whole office about it, and imagining a range of consequences from Larsen’s endorsement of her decision to Larsen’s rage at having his attention deflected when he was in the middle of a talk about budgets and accountability. And supposing the bones turned out to be from a horse or a deer?
At which point Eddy Haxen loped into the building.
Katrine hurried towards him with relief. “I’ve just been given two bones in a plastic bag. They were found at the waste disposal centre. The supervisor,” she gestured to Carl Andersen, idly swinging his orange helmet and staring at his boots, “brought them here. I can’t decide what to do.”
“Have you stopped all the waste dumping?”
“It’s stopped. But how long can we stop it for?”
“As long as it takes,” said Eddy. He smiled at her. “Don’t worry. I’ll take responsibility for ordering a shut-down.” He put his hand on Katrine’s arm. “It’s my turn to take the flak. Call Harry Norsk. I’ll speak to the waste disposal chap.”
Harry Norsk came in straightaway. Katrine and Eddy met him in the pathology room. Eddy gave him the bag with the bones. Harry pulled on a pair of gloves, lifted the bones from the bag and laid them on one of the stainless steel tables.