The Killing Forest (17 page)

T
hey drove over the hill outside Særløse. Louise gazed at John Knudsen's dilapidated farm. Two unmarked police cars were parked on the road, and several people were milling around the farm.

He could be there, she thought. They could have hidden Sune in the big barn where Pussy had drowned the newborn kittens.

No one spoke in the car, but she saw from Big Thomsen's expression in the side mirror that he was thinking. He must have realized by now that he wasn't the only one the police were interested in. Apparently that relieved him; he slumped down in his seat up front and stared straight ahead.

She called Nymand and reported in a few short words that they had finished their search. Negative, she said. They were headed for the address where Thomsen claimed he'd spent the night.

“Have the others reported in?” she asked. He told her that the team searching the mason's house in SÃ¥by had finished. No sign of the boy there, either.

“At first he claimed he knew nothing about Sune Frandsen. He'd never heard of a nithing pole and had no idea where Ingersminde was,” Nymand said.

Liar
, Louise thought. The mason had worked a long time at Camilla's manor. She'd hired his company to do the renovation.

The team searching Pussy's farm hadn't reported back yet.

Louise looked away as they drove past the gamekeeper's house and into the forest. She hadn't been there since the night she was attacked, but she knew that the house had been empty since Bodil Parkov had moved out.

She smiled to herself at how Eik confidently took the road past Avnsø to get to Bitten's house. The first time they were in the forest together, she'd had the impression that he'd never been that far away from Sydhavnen. And now, he was driving around as if he'd lived there his entire life.

Bitten's forest ranger house came into sight, and Louise noticed someone outside. From the boyish form and the short hair, she thought it must be Sune walking around, though she'd only seen his picture. Then she realized the figure in tight jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt was Bitten.

“What the hell!” Thomsen straightened up in his seat as they neared the house. All his things lay piled up in the middle of the courtyard. Bitten had gone back inside, and now an armful of clothes came flying out the door.

Thomsen shoved the car door open. “What in hell are you doing, you crazy bitch?”

Bitten whirled around; she hadn't heard them drive in. She stood with her hands on her hips, her expression telling the world that she wasn't backing down.

Louise and Eik were on Thomsen's heels as he strode across the courtyard; several of the tall, broken hollyhocks outside the door drooped close to the cobblestones. Bitten meant business, it seemed.

“You can take your fucking shit and go to hell,” Bitten snapped when Thomsen started shouting at her again.

René's frail wife had also managed to drag his big chair out to the courtyard. It lay on its side, the large flat-screen TV on top of it. Thomsen's face turned red when he saw it. He stepped up to Bitten, and before Louise and Eik could stop him he punched her in the face.

“You're going to regret this,” he said, hunched over now as Eik twisted his arm from behind and pulled him back.

Bitten didn't answer. She held her hand to her cheek as blood began to flow from her nose onto the back of her hand. But she looked defiantly at Thomsen.

“You are the biggest asshole to ever walk on two legs,” she said. “I never want to see you again.”

“What happened?” Louise asked as Eik steered Big Thomsen back to the car, threatening him with charges of battery.

“René refused to see me when I visited him today.” Bitten's voice was nearly unrecognizable from bitterness. “Asshole there apparently delivered a message to him, told him I wanted a divorce, that I'd hired a lawyer, the papers were already written up. I've never said I wanted a divorce, and then when I tried to use my debit card, it was blocked. I went to the bank, and they told me that René's salary, which usually goes into our joint account, hadn't come in. And I thought I was helping René by being friendly to Thomsen while he was in jail.”

Bitten wiped her hand on her jeans, a smear of blood appearing on her thigh. Her nose was still bleeding, and Louise suggested they go inside so she could put ice on it.

“All the while he's been saying he'd help me and my daughter—that everything would be all right. He'd keep René on the payroll so we wouldn't suffer.” In the kitchen, Louise wrapped a washcloth around ice and held it to Bitten's nose. She continued to explain how she'd been used, how she felt like she'd walked into a trap.

“He's here all the time. The deal was that he would come only when my daughter was asleep or not home, and now he insists on taking her to school in the morning and being part of the family. He's taken over everything. Today he was sleeping in bed when I came home from the jail. Do you know what he said when I asked why he was destroying my family?”

Bitten's face was contorted with rage. “He said he would crush René, just because he could! Like he was talking about swatting a fly!”

She threw the washcloth down and dried her cheek on her sleeve. “He said that nobody got away with stabbing him in the back.”

“Stabbing him in the back?” Louise said.

“He'd heard that René told you about the rituals out in the forest, and the woman, too, the boy's gift.”

Louise was stunned. “Just how did he know about that?”

Bitten looked away. Finally she answered, “He shoots skeet with an officer who helped question René.”

Enraged, Louise grabbed her phone to call Nymand. Bitten rested her forehead on her hand and shook her head, as if she had no idea what to do. “So while I'm being told all this, the bastard is in my bed, snoring!”

Louise stuck her phone back in her pocket and put her arm around René's wife. “Did he spend the night with you?”

Bitten nodded. “He came around eight, emptied the refrigerator, and plopped down in front of the TV. He didn't even say good night when he came to bed, and he was still asleep when I left to visit René.”

“And you're sure he was here all night.”

Bitten frowned at her. “When a man snores like he does, you know he's in the house.”

Louise's phone rang. Camilla's name popped up on the display. She excused herself and answered. “Hi.”

“I found Sune,” her friend whispered.

C
amilla had been sitting in their yard, under a parasol, when Elinor suddenly appeared on the terrace and held out her hand. She'd smiled and said hello; she was getting used to the old woman showing up out of nowhere. But Elinor walked off, still beckoning at Camilla, who then got the message.

They went down the forest path silently. The old woman's cane crackled each time she planted it on the ground, but she kept a pace that Camilla, her leg still hurting, struggled to match.

She was apprehensive when they neared the sacrificial oak in the silent, mysterious forest. Elinor stopped and pointed, and her expression made Camilla even more anxious. She gathered her nerve and looked, then she covered her mouth in shock when she recognized the dark blue jacket and the lifeless body leaning up against the tree.

Sune's head hung on his chest, his hair covering his eyes. What froze Camilla, however, was the sight of his right forearm covered in dark blood. She dreaded doing it, but she had to kneel down and press her finger against his throat, check for a pulse. She closed her eyes and concentrated.

When she stood up, she was shaking so badly that she could barely pull her phone out of her pocket. She crouched down and punched in the emergency number. Time seemed to stand still; she feared she'd gotten there too late. She surprised herself by describing precisely the location in the forest, and after she asked that the information be given to Deputy Commissioner Nymand, the dispatcher told her the ambulance was on its way.

“I think he's breathing. It's hard for me to tell,” Camilla said hesitantly, unsure whether the dispatcher was listening. Then she called Louise, but later she could hardly remember what she'd said; all her attention was on the boy, checking for signs of life. Fingers moving, chest rising. But he simply wasn't moving.

Slowly, she realized what had happened. The blood came from his right elbow, and his vein had been cut. There was no doubt about the symbolism—Sune had been placed under the tree as a sacrifice to the gods.

Desperately, she watched Elinor walk around in small circles over by the bonfire site. Her lips were moving, but no sound came out.

From her stint on the crime desk of a newspaper, Camilla knew that a person with a main artery cut had very little time. She pulled herself together and ripped off her blouse, tearing it into rags.

“It's going to be all right,” she mumbled. She began speaking to him in a calm voice, as much for her sake as his. She lay him on the ground and lifted his legs, rested them on the tree trunk so the blood would run down to his head, and bound strips of cloth around Sune's upper arm. The ambulance wailed in the distance. Her mind was racing; heart massage, artificial respiration—would she be doing more harm than good? She grabbed a small stick, stuck it in between the windings of cloth, and twisted the stick to tighten the tourniquet.

T
hey left Bitten's house immediately after Camilla's call. When Thomsen had demanded to know what was going on, they told him to shut up.

Eik dumped Big Thomsen off at the roundabout near Særløse. Louise ignored his bitching about not being driven all the way home. She knew they were going to hear about it.

Thomsen pounded his fist on the hood. “You'll find your way home,” Eik said from his open window. Before the big man could answer, Eik put the car in gear and floored it, gravel rocketing off the car's undercarriage. Louise watched in the side mirror as Thomsen stood yelling. Nymand called.

“The father is on his way in. The boy is in emergency, he's in critical condition.”

The first thing she noticed when they walked into the hospital was the butcher, hunched over in a chair, crying. Louise stopped. Eik put his hand on her back. “I'll find Nymand. Go on over to him.” He approached a receptionist in a white coat who had just come out of her glassed-in office.

Louise studied the butcher for a moment. When they'd left him earlier in the day at his home, he'd looked like a man about to fall apart. Now it had happened.

“Hi,” she said quietly. She sat down beside him. “Have you heard anything?”

He shook his head and breathed in deeply. They sat for a while in the turmoil of the emergency room. A child screamed in the waiting room, and a nurse rushed off.

“Come inside,” a low voice said. Louise looked up into the face of a black woman. “You shouldn't have to sit out here. You can use the lounge; no one will have time for a break the next few hours anyway.”

Her badge identified her as a head physician. Louise felt a pang of shame over being surprised that she spoke fluent Danish.

“When can I see him?” the butcher asked, unaware of anything except that this person could tell him something about his son.

“We'll join him in a moment,” the doctor said. She put a hand on his shoulder and led him to a chair at the long table. “But there's something I have to tell you first.”

The butcher froze.

“I've come down from the oncology ward. Your wife was admitted early this morning, and it was decided at our morning conference that she should receive terminal care.”

The butcher, obviously confused, looked first at her, then at Louise. “What does that mean?”

“That means that we've stopped her treatment. But we need your permission to remove nutrition support and stop providing her with fluids. We'll continue with medication for pain.”

Again he looked at Louise, who felt tears welling up. She held his hand. “It means that Jane is about to die, Lars.” She pressed her lips together and blinked until her eyes cleared. “You're her nearest relative; they need your permission. If they keep giving her fluids and nutrition, her death will only be delayed, and it could be a long process.” She looked over at the doctor, who was sitting at his other side.

“Unfortunately, there's no more we can do for your wife,” she explained. “She's entered the final phase, and right now she's semiconscious. She sleeps most of the time. We're making sure she's in no pain. We can't say exactly how long it will be. It might happen today, or it might take several days, maybe a week. Of course this is more difficult, now that your son has been admitted.”

The butcher had begun shaking his head, mechanically, from side to side. Louise could see he was unaware of what he was doing. She caught herself pressing her hands against her stomach.

“But Sune?” he whispered. “What about him?”

“Your son is on the way to intensive care. He's lost a lot of blood. His pulse is rapid, but very weak. He was very close to bleeding to death. We're giving him fluids and oxygen while we prepare a blood transfusion.”

“Is he going to make it?” he whispered without looking at her.

“It's too early to say,” the doctor answered. “He was in bad shape before he received treatment.”

Louise couldn't handle it any longer. Tears ran down her cheeks as she stood up. “We've arranged for your wife to be taken down to his room, so they can be together,” was the last thing she heard before walking out.

At six thirty the butcher walked into the ICU's family room, which the duty nurse had given them permission to use. Louise and Eik had been driving back to Copenhagen when Nymand called and said that the boy's father had asked to speak with them.

He was pale when he sat down across from them, his eyes dark and red-rimmed. He seemed to be staring through them. “Right now the doctors think there's a chance he'll survive.” He folded his hands on the table, as if he needed support. “But Jane won't. They pushed her bed up against Sune so she can reach his hand. I don't know how much she understands, but she knows he's there. She spoke his name.”

At first his crying was silent, then he began sobbing from deep within. He shook his head and stood up, walked over to the sink in the corner of the room, grabbed a paper towel, and blew his nose. He stood for a moment with his back to them before throwing the paper in the trash and returning to the table.

“I'm sorry,” he mumbled. He breathed very deeply, as if to compose himself. “I told you that Big Thomsen's gang isn't your normal group of friends,” he said to Louise. “It's like some sect that none of us can get out of. I want you to know I always respected Klaus, a lot, because he tried. After what's happened today, I'll never forgive myself for not having the same courage.”

Louise felt empty inside. What good was courage when you died because of it?

“I want to tell you how it started.”

She felt Eik's arm around her shoulder, and she leaned back, tense now. She thought she'd heard the whole story.

“Do you remember Eline? Thomsen's little sister?”

Louise tried to think: Thomsen had a sister? Then she remembered her, a pale, thin girl who had been in her little brother's class. She had also been in a photo on Thomsen's dresser. She nodded slowly; the girl had been sick, though she couldn't recall what it was.

“It's a really sad story,” the butcher continued, looking down at his hands. “When you're young, being around sickness and death can overwhelm you.”

His expression and, in particular, the way he talked about Eline told Louise that something had affected him deeply.

He looked up. “I don't know, maybe I'm just trying to justify what happened.”

“What was wrong with her?” Eik asked. He'd stuck a match in his mouth, a substitute for a cigarette.

He ignored the question. “I've thought about it a thousand times. Back then, none of us understood the consequences. You can't, not when you're just teenagers. We thought we could save her. It turned out we couldn't.”

He was practically talking to himself now, Louise thought. He straightened up. “Thomsen had taken his sister up in this tree house he'd built. He wanted to show her the view. That was in 1983, when she was eight years old. A limb broke, she fell down on the left side of her back, but she kept on playing, she felt okay. After dinner that night she started complaining about pain. She got worse as the night went on, and they ended up taking her to the emergency room. The doctors told them she was bleeding internally, that she had ruptured her spleen.”

The butcher paused for a moment. “She had to have a blood transfusion, it was a matter of life or death,” he said, quieter now. “And that's how she contracted HIV. The blood hadn't been treated. Five years later she had AIDS.”

“But that doesn't make it anyone's fault that she died,” Louise said. “The girl suffered from a serious illness.”

The butcher shook his head. “Eline didn't die from AIDS. Thomsen killed her. She's one of the girls you found in the old graveyard.”