The Killing Forest (14 page)

W
hat the hell happened back there?” Eik asked. He rolled the window down and lit another cigarette.

Louise was about to complain, but she let it go. She craved a cigarette, too. It wasn't so much what the two men had said as it was the mood. As if she and Eik had rammed into a wall.

“Welcome to Hvalsø,” she said sadly, though she knew she wasn't being fair to the rest of the town. “Where the best defense is a good offense.”

It had always been that way, she thought. It was protection, though it took some time to learn how to use it. Back when she was in school, after she got a horse, her father had started a dung heap on the other side of the road. Before long, a man from Lerbjerg began complaining. And he wasn't even their closest neighbor. But by that time, her father had learned how the game was played; he told the man that there were lots of things you could talk about. Like how someone had run a line from their septic tank to the district's drainage pipe, how piss and shit ran out into the nearby stream. After that, her father heard no complaints about the dung heap.

“It's really incredible,” she said. She laughed as she remembered more of her father's favorite stories.

“What is?” Eik said.

“When my parents bought the farm out by Lerbjerg, there were grain fields on both sides of the road, and of course they had to be harvested. My dad had never done it before. He came from Copenhagen; he knew zero about these things, so he hired one of the neighbors who owned a combine. The neighbor did the cutting, Dad stood up on the machine and tied off sacks of grain and tossed them to the ground. After that, they were supposed to be turned regularly so the grain wouldn't rot.”

“That must've been a long time ago,” Eik said, even though she was sure he knew nothing about farming.

“Every time Dad went out to turn the sacks, our neighbor sat down outside his house with a cup of coffee, enjoying the sight of this big-city slicker wrestling fifty-kilo sacks of grain. Of course, the neighbor wouldn't dream of helping, but he wasn't shy about showing how entertaining it was to watch Dad sweat. That's how ‘foreigners' were treated. It's probably different now, with all the young families from the city moving out here, but looking down on others has always been part of the mentality. Pussy lives right up here.” Louise pointed to the church on top of the hill.

John Knudsen had taken over his parents' farm in Særløse. He'd been in the same class as Big Thomsen, and his unfortunate school nickname had stuck with him. At least as far as Louise knew.

Eik turned off and drove along the churchyard, down a narrow gravel road—two ruts separated by tall grass that rustled against the car's undercarriage. The road ended at a ramshackle farmhouse with a big barn. The barn door was a torn green tarp. The Knudsen family farm had gone downhill, she noticed. She'd passed by here almost every day when she was a kid, to catch the school bus.

It was the complete opposite of Thomsen's farm, where everything was kept up. Almost too well—Louise suspected that he coerced Hvalsø's plumbers, carpenters, and other workmen to moonlight for him. It wasn't hard to imagine they owed him favors, which they paid back by working on his house.

Chickens ran around Pussy's farmyard, pecking between the cobblestones, while two kids poured sand out of a red plastic bucket in front of the kitchen steps.

“Park out here,” Louise said. She looked around. A stocky woman in tights with a cigarette hanging from her mouth stood waiting outside on the steps. Another small child clung to her legs, trying to drag her back into the house.

Eik was already out of the car. He said hello to Knudsen's wife, who nodded and pointed toward the barn behind the house. Louise didn't recognize the woman, though it could be because of weight she'd put on from all the pregnancies.

Louise walked over and held out her hand. Now she was sure she'd never seen the woman before. “He's over in the barn, drowning some newborn kittens,” his wife said. She made it sound as if it was something he did all the time. “But he has to pick up our oldest; she goes to gymnastics. He'll be along in a minute.”

A gray tabby came meowing out of the house, but Pussy's wife shoved it gently back inside with her foot before shutting the door. The young child still hung on to her.

“How many children do you have?” Eik asked. He peered over at the two in the sandbox.

“Four,” she said. She laid a hand on her stomach. “There's another on the way. But not until Christmas.”

Eik smiled and offered his congratulations, while Louise thought about the cigarette the woman had been smoking when they arrived. The two kids in the sandbox shouted, and one of the boys began crying. The other started packing a pile of sand that looked like a steep mountain.

“They're burying a mouse. Tjalfe wanted a real bonfire for the body, but their father won't let them start fires when he's not around.”

“That's a great name,” Eik said. “Are they all named after someone in Nordic mythology?”

“Would be if it was up to my husband,” the woman said. She smiled broadly, two deep dimples coming into sight. “They'd be called Odin, Thor, and Loke, but I put my foot down.”

Eik nodded. He said that his sister had a daughter named Sigrun.

Louise didn't even know he had a sister. In fact, she didn't know much about his childhood, except that once he'd mentioned he grew up in Hillerød and that he had moved out at seventeen.

They heard footsteps. Two kids shouted, “Dad!”

John Knudsen's hair had turned gray. It lay plastered on his head; he looked exactly like his father, who had always stood and waved at his son as the school bus drove away.

He turned his attention to his children, praising their grave mound before walking over to Louise and Eik. He recognized her at once, she noted, nodding shortly to her before shaking Eik's hand. He wasn't hostile toward them like the Thomsens had been, but he wasn't particularly friendly, either.

“You can go on back inside,” he said to his wife. “I'll only be a minute.”

“Good-bye,” she said, smiling at them. Her dimples deepened when Eik promised they wouldn't be long.

When she closed the door behind her, Knudsen said he knew why they were there. Thomsen had called.

Louise regretted that they hadn't immediately gone over to the barn.

“I don't have anything to tell you about that evening,” he said in his broad mid-Zealand accent. “What is it you want to know, anyway?”

“We just want to know what happened,” Louise said. “What scared Sune so badly that he didn't dare return home?”

Pussy laughed. “Oh, that; I can tell you that! That kid gets scared when someone farts. One of the boys probably let one rip.”

Louise was furious, but Eik reacted first. Knudsen was still grinning when Eik grabbed him by the collar and slammed him against the wall. “Let's hear about the young prostitute. The one you forced out into the forest,” he hissed.

“We didn't force anybody. We paid her,” he gasped as Eik tightened his grip on his blue-checkered lumberjack shirt.

“And after you boys had your fun, you killed her!” Eik held him a moment longer before letting go. Knudsen's knees buckled as he struggled to catch his breath.

Louise saw his wife looking out the living room window.

“Did you kill her?” Eik asked.

Knudsen held his throat with both hands, his eyes unfocused. “We didn't kill anybody,” he said, shaking his head.

“We found her body out there,” Eik said.

Pussy looked down at the ground.

Louise took over. “Did you kill a young woman out in Boserup Forest?” The kids in the sandbox stared wide-eyed at them.

Pussy shook his head violently. He'd recovered enough now to pull himself together. “What are you talking about? Of course we didn't.”

“Who was out there with you that night?”

His expression turned blank. “I have to drive over and pick my daughter up,” he said, and started off to his car.

Louise nodded. She glanced at Eik; they'd gotten enough for now. Pussy had admitted that they'd paid Lisa Maria to go along with them to the forest, a statement he could hardly deny later—she'd recorded him on her phone.

R
ené Gamst was leaning back with his hands in the pockets of his baggy prison pants when Louise walked in the visiting room. His hair was still wet from showering. He'd drunk some of the cola in front of him on the table.

“I've got nothing more to say to you,” he said before Louise had set foot in the room. He was about to say more, but he straightened up when he saw she wasn't alone.

“We think you've got a lot to tell us,” Eik said. He tossed his cigarettes on the table. “Care to smoke?”

“Who the hell are you?” René said, grabbing the pack. Then he laughed. “Now I remember! You were out there when your partner here got into that trouble I saved her from.”

“That's right,” Eik said, nodding. “I was out there. I know exactly how big an asshole you are. That's why I don't really feel bad about telling you this—one of your buddies is putting it to your wife while you sit around here playing tic-tac-toe.”

René glanced over at Louise. “What the fuck is he talking about?”

“You'll have to excuse my colleague,” she said. “He comes from Sydhavnen; they can be hard to understand. What he's trying to tell you is, Big Thomsen has moved in with Bitten. He's taken over your wife, your king-size bed, and your child.”

“What is this bullshit?” René hissed. He was about to stand up, but Eik laid a hand on his shoulder.

“You don't think it's true?” Louise said calmly. “So tell me, do you have a blue terry-cloth robe? It looks silly on a man half a meter taller and a lot wider than you.”

René sank in his chair.

“You're not a player any longer, René. Call it what you will: checkmate, cuckold. I'm sure it doesn't feel nice at all.”

She had imagined this moment would be sweeter, but the satisfaction of revenge faded when René stared at her for a moment before folding his hands and resting his forehead on his knuckles.

“We've just been out to see Jane. You probably don't care, but she and I used to play handball together. I'm very sorry to see how sick she is. Have you seen her recently?”

Louise let the question hang in the air. He didn't answer.

“The doctors told her she might have a week left. Maybe two if she's lucky. That's it.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked. He gazed blankly at her, his face pale now. “Sure, I remember you two hung out together.”

“Because she told us about the initiation ceremony. Her son had been looking forward to that evening. He was proud. But do you know what tortures her every single minute of every single day?”

He didn't answer. All he could do was stare.

“Do you know?” Louise shouted. She leaned over the table. “The fear that she may never see him again. Do you understand how that must feel?”

“It's one thing that your wife is spreading them for another guy,” Eik said. He was sitting now, over on the cot. “But at least she's alive. Who knows, you might even get back together with her, if she'll have you.”

“Jane told us about your rituals and beliefs,” Louise said. “Now you'll tell us in detail what happened that evening, when Sune turned fifteen.”

René looked up at her. “How am I supposed to do that? I was here. You know that, you fucking bitch!”

She saw out of the corner of her eye that Eik was about to spring up, but she managed to stop him. She slammed her fist on the table in front of René; his cola toppled over and fizzed against the reclosable cap. “I think you knew the plans down to the very last detail.”

“And why should I tell you anything?”

“Because it's your very best chance to get Thomsen out of your wife's bed. And because your friends have already talked. You ought to know them well enough to figure out they're blaming you for doing all the planning, now that you're in here and unable to defend yourself.”

Louise knew she had him by the balls. She'd lied without blinking, without the hint of a bad conscience. She was pounding René Gamst to the floor with every word she spoke, and now she decided to finish him off.

“You don't think Thomsen wants to see you free and back home with Bitten, do you?”

He winced in obvious pain. He clearly didn't know what to believe, but finally seemed to realize that she was probably right. He looked like a broken man. “Is he shacked up with her?”

Louise twisted the knife. “When I stopped by, he was about to take your daughter to day care. So I assume that he is.”

“The son of a bitch!” Gamst flared up in fury before slumping again. He buried his face in his hands.

“We found the body of a young woman out in the forest, close to where you hold your rituals,” she said, after giving him time to recover. “And we suspect there's a connection. We know your brotherhood paid the prostitute to come out to the forest that night. Which one of you contacted her?”

René didn't move.

“I've heard about the fertility ritual, and I want to know what you had planned. And I promise that if it was Thomsen who contacted the woman, he won't get away with laying the blame on you.”

He lifted his head up and stared straight ahead for a moment. “He arranges everything when we bring a girl out to the forest.”

He spoke into thin air without looking at them; obviously he felt uncomfortable about snitching on his friend. “What do I get out of this?” he asked, in a different tone of voice.

“Like I told you, if you're lucky you'll get Thomsen out of your bed,” Louise said.

He thought that over a moment. “Fine,” he said, his voice hoarse. He looked earnestly at Louise. “If I tell you, do you promise he'll stay away from my family?”

“I can't promise you anything,” she said without blinking, “but if we round up enough evidence, that will take care of itself.”

René reached for Eik's cigarettes on the table and asked for a lighter. “We knew the butcher's son hadn't screwed a girl yet, so we all agreed he needed to be a real man, now that he was entering the brotherhood.”

“And having sex with a prostitute makes you a real man?”

Suddenly she remembered an evening down at the Hvalsø Inn. It had been a Friday, disco night, and she'd stood at the bar listening to some guys talk about exactly the same thing: You're not a real man until you've been with a whore.

“Yeah,” Rene said. “There has to be a first time.”

Louise couldn't believe it. “So the plan was that he'd make his debut in front of his father and all of you, with everyone giving him a score. That's just beautiful.”

René lowered his eyes, but he nodded.

“So what went wrong?” she asked.

“I don't know. But the ritual itself is quite an experience, and the boy's soft. Maybe he didn't like having his vein cut.”

Louise thought about Jane, who'd been so proud of her son, and about his father, who claimed he was a pansy.

“After the initiation, he was supposed to get his gift,” René said.

“The gift being a prostitute.” Louise sighed. The big test of manhood.

“I heard that he didn't want to do it, that he ran off with his pants around his ankles.”

“So your friends took over?” Eik guessed.

“I don't know what happened,” he said quickly.

But Louise was all over him, literally in his face. “How did she die?” she hissed.

“I don't know! They say she ran off, too.”

“After they fucked her?”

A beat went by before he nodded.

Louise considered telling him about the two other bodies the police had found, but she decided to save that for later; they might need to squeeze him again for information. “Who was out in the forest that night?”

He clenched his teeth, his jaw muscles tightening. “I don't know.”

“Take a guess,” Louise said, getting angry again. “Thomsen, Pussy, the mason, the butcher. Who else?”

He put on a poker face.

“Come on, who else?” Eik asked, from behind him.

“Maybe the mason's son, Roar,” René said. “He was initiated last year, but his father didn't know if he could make it. He's in boarding school.”

“Are there others in the inner circle?” Louise said, trying to keep her voice calm.

She couldn't read René's expression. “Klaus,” he finally said. “I don't think he was able to make it that evening.”

He might as well have punched her.

“How the hell can I know who was there when I wasn't there myself? I don't know what happened and no one's going to tell me, either. You've taken care of that!”

“You've had a visitor,” she said. “I assume you two talked?”

René didn't answer.

“The oath ring,” she said. “Tell me about it!”

He seemed awkward in his chair, scooting forward, shifting his feet, but then he sat up. “Passing around the oath ring means taking a vow of silence. You can never tell anyone what's happened. You may regret it, but you can't break that vow.”

The dim visiting room fell silent. The last of the smoke from the stubbed-out cigarettes hung near the ceiling.

“Did you pass around the oath ring the night Klaus died?” Louise asked, her voice quiet now. René sat absolutely still except for a slight nodding of his head.

“Did he really have my blue robe on?” he asked a moment later. Louise saw the despair in his eyes again. “Bitten gave it to me on my birthday.”

“Tell me what happened out in the house,” she said. She raised her eyebrows at Eik and nodded to the door, signaling that he could wait outside if he liked. He shook his head.

René began crying. Tears streamed silently down his prison-pale cheeks as his shoulders shook. Louise lifted a half-full pack of tissues out of her bag and tossed it onto the table.

He blew his nose loudly, sat for a moment to catch his breath, then turned to her with red-rimmed eyes. “We were all out there,” he began.

Louise felt light-headed; suddenly she wasn't sure she wanted to hear what was coming. Would she be better off knowing? Would it heal what had been ripped apart inside her, or had too much time gone by?

“You weren't there,” he said, as if she'd forgotten that. “We brought the beer; it was supposed to be a housewarming. First he tried to throw us out, then someone told him he can't do that to his brothers. And we walked in.”

He eyed Louise angrily. “What the hell is it with you bitches? You fucking think you can come in and totally change everything around, just because you want to play house.”

Louise was about to defend herself, but she realized that in a way he was right. She hadn't liked her boyfriend's buddies. Yet the change was just as much Klaus's doing; he'd simply grown up.

“That's how it was with Bitten, too, when she moved in. At first, she didn't want me hanging out with the guys. I got that idea out of her head in no time flat.”

His eyes lost focus; he seemed lost in thought. Probably because he realized that now it was Bitten hanging out with the guys. Or at least one of them.

“What happened then?” Louise whispered.

René took a deep breath and looked away. “We stacked the cases of beer out in the laundry room behind the kitchen, so we could grab one on our way back in from taking a leak. We were all standing around out there when Klaus came and gave us this bullshit about having to see somebody; he had to go. Then he changed his story, said you were coming home, that he didn't want any trouble since you'd just moved in.”

Louise felt terrible, hearing how her boyfriend had tried to get rid of them.

“Then he talked about how his father was coming by with a drill. That's when Thomsen slapped him around and said to shut his fucking mouth and open some beer. Then Klaus got mad. Those two had been at each other's throats since Klaus said he wanted out of the brotherhood. Said he was going to talk about some of the stuff if we didn't let him go.”

“What was he going to talk about?” Louise asked. “The accident the janitor had out in SÃ¥by? About what happened to Gudrun at her store?”

René looked puzzled. His eyes darted as he tried to add everything up. Then he nodded. “I think so, but I don't know. Back then I figured it was just a threat to get out of the brotherhood.”

It dawned on Louise why René had suddenly begun talking. He knew he hadn't given them enough about the initiation to get his wife out of Thomsen's clutches. The story about Klaus's death, however, could work. He was going after Thomsen, and she was with him all the way.

“Klaus didn't want to be part of it anymore,” he told her. “Most of us have been there at some time or other. It's just that nobody's been brave enough to leave. Not yet anyway.” The final words came out under his breath.

Louise wanted to hear more, while at the same time she felt like running, vanishing from the room, like smoke being sucked under the door, blowing away in the wind, into the darkness.

“He kept telling us we had to go, and take the beer with us. And Thomsen kept slapping him. And then Klaus lost his balance and fell over one of the cases of beer. He just lay there, but then the butcher and I got him up in a chair.”

An image flashed by in Louise's head of Klaus's parents' black leather recliner, which they'd given to Klaus.

“I don't know what time it was. We were listening to music, but when we ran out of beer we decided to take off. We asked Klaus if he wanted to come along, but he didn't answer, he just sat there with his eyes closed, like he was asleep. The butcher went over and grabbed him, and he was fucking dead. We didn't know until we started shaking him, he just fell off the chair.”

He paused.

“No one dies tripping over a case of beer,” he said. “We couldn't know. It was an accident.” Another pause. “A really shitty accident.”

“Why didn't you call an ambulance?” Louise asked. “Who came up with the idea of the noose? And why did you want it to look like a suicide?”