The Seventh Child (18 page)

“Don’t worry. We have a solution.”

Orla stood on the soft grass, swaying a bit.
A solution.
Were they going to send him to prison?

“You need to get away from this neighborhood,” the policeman said. “Away from these boys. We found you a boarding school on Sjællands Odde.”

A few days later, Carl Malle had sorted out the paperwork, and his mother took him to Copenhagen Central Station in silence. She had loved her son with the nagging anxiety that all mothers possessed, but
she’d
kept that affection hidden behind tightly sealed lips.

“I’ll see you,” she said.

Orla was silent.

He left his home sure that he was all alone in the world. He disappeared, as it were, from his childhood without a sound, and without anyone really taking notice: the son of Gurli Berntsen, insignificant office worker, tolerated but barely.

A murderer
…
he didn’t even know it himself. In the following months a pipe-smoking man from Kongslund visited him and spoke about Orla’s childhood in Glee Court (and once about the Fool in the wetlands, and the brutal incident that
he’d
otherwise put behind him), but the small man didn’t ask any questions that Orla felt compelled to answer.

Where does it come from, this immense rage that fills some people? And why does it afflict some children like a pile driver from Hell, while others seem to go free?

I followed Orla’s childhood from my hiding place behind the hawthorn, and studied the slow dissolution that no one tried to stop. In this way a deformity grows in the soul as inexorably as a skull develops its curvature or a nose its angle—without anyone reacting. Orla’s humiliation was sent by neither God nor the Devil, but had been passed on to him from the human being who should have protected him, as Magdalene would have said with a lisp: his own mother.

It was this rage deep inside the half-grown Orla that frightened adults, an anger that threatened to explode long before he could build a career and advance to a position where he could overcome the hardships of everyday life.

Magdalene didn’t think there was any real difference between the boy who went to Sjællands Odde and the man who, four decades later, processed case after case in the Ministry of National Affairs with a cool, impervious efficiency.

Late one afternoon, Carl Malle visited him at the boarding school. “Do you miss your old neighborhood?” he asked.

Orla didn’t respond. The only thing he really missed was the photo on the wall, the one with the man and the boy and the orange beach ball.

Carl Malle would never understand.

“Why did you give the boy from the yellow tenements your policeman’s cap?” Orla said.

“The boy from the yellow tenements?”

“The one I hit with the brick. The one with the white bandage. I saw you give him your cap.”

“I don’t know anyone from the yellow tenements,” Malle lied.

Orla recognized the lie, and he lowered his gaze to hide his rage.

The day Orla returned to Glee Court—three years later—Magdalene visited me. She sat rocking back and forth in her flimsy chair, almost like in the old days, and lisping as thickly as she did back then.

Marie
, she said, between a series of snorts and spastic movements.
Mark my words. The sins of the fathers and mothers are rarely atoned by children like Orla. One day he’ll be sitting in the same chair his mother sat in, and his fingers will slide into the same groove as his mother’s and grandfather’s and their parents’ before them, and because he doesn’t understand it, he himself will become part of the Darkness—in the end, he will even become the Darkness itself.

Sometimes, Magdalene’s heavenly predictions were uttered like a curse.

Then she jerked sideways over the left armrest until her wheelchair nearly tipped over, snorted one last time, and disappeared.

8

FEAR

May 8, 2008

My foster mother knocks on the door and waits for me to invite her in. Though I don’t respond to her knocking, she nonetheless steps into the room she has given me and sits on my bed. I am seated at my desk with a view of the sound and Hven.

“You’re reading those journals,” she says, and I can sense the fear in this remark, which she has made time and time again since Magdalene’s death. She is convinced that the journals I have inherited from my invalid friend reveal secrets that no child can bear, and she has always protected her herd from anything threatening, anything from the outside.

Today, now that she has long since retired, Kongslund has become the center of a case that may reveal an embarrassing and secretive past, which, according to the newspapers and to the gossip no one can control, involves the Ministry of National Affairs.

Bog Man had never had such a haggard expression as the day Carl Malle arrived at the ministry. The Kongslund Affair had drained from his skin what little color he possessed.

The department head looked as though he had stared directly into the face of death—even though he had no concrete knowledge of the case and hadn’t been present during the intense phone conversations between Malle and the Almighty Enevold.

“Our visitor is
not
a retired police officer but a former assistant chief of police,” the irate minister clarified. The atmosphere in the ministry was tense, the humidity high.

The former assistant chief of police spent his retirement in the same place
he’d
spent his youth—and most of his life: in the quiet brownstone neighborhood of Søborg. From here
he’d
assembled a handful of his former colleagues and formed a private security firm that offered distinctive expertise to large businesses. His exclusive firm wasn’t listed in the yellow pages; only those who knew someone worth knowing would be able to contact them.

Ole Almind-Enevold had known Carl Malle since the Second World War.

The minister had asked his chief of staff to be present for the meeting.

“You’re familiar with Carl Malle and everything he represents?” he asked, repeating almost verbatim his message from the crisis meeting three days earlier. “We need him now. We cannot tolerate anonymous threats to this ministry. Even if we can’t figure out what the letter writer wants, we have to help Carl Malle as much as we can.”

“But that letter has no substance whatsoever,” Orla Berntsen balked.

The minister gave his protégé a hard stare. “Regardless of what you think, you have to understand one thing: at any moment, the Captain might become gravely ill. So ill that we
…
that I will have to assume leadership of the country, with all of the complications that entails.” It was a name Almind-Enevold only used in private:
the Captain
. “We can’t have such a matter hanging over us. It’s practically been insinuated that people in the party live a double life. And besides, Kongslund is about to celebrate a very important anniversary in a few days, and under no circumstances do I want the festivities tainted by such a
…
such a madman.”

Under normal conditions, Orla would have repeated his conviction that there was nothing to worry about; he knew his words carried weight with the older man who had become his protector. But there was something in the minister’s tone of voice that caused him to simply fold his hands and listen. The minister was obviously more nervous than usual.

“What I need right now is a distraction
…
” the minister said, breaking the silence that had filled the air between them.

“A distraction?” Orla repeated, although he knew perfectly well what the minister meant.

“We need something to draw attention away from all of this. In case Knud Taasing’s gossipy tabloid intends to pursue the matter. This is Malle’s suggestion.”

“How about the Tamil boy?” The proposition fell from Orla Berntsen’s lips before
he’d
even considered it. It was logical. “Several newspapers have already contacted us about it,” he said. “Maybe we could
…
” He paused.

“Deport him to divert their attention?” The minister furrowed his brow for a moment, then lit up. “Yes. Why the hell not
…?
That might very well do the trick. The media love maudlin stories
…
assaults
…
abuse
…
power grabs
.”

There was a knock on the door and the secretary showed in the other two top officials. The Witch Doctor took a seat next to Orla, while Bog Man stood by the window, his eyes drooping further down his cheeks than normal. The department head was near retirement, and it was clear he feared being blindsided in the eleventh hour.

The minister pressed a button on his intercom and raised his voice: “Has Carl arrived? Well, send him in then!”

He met the security advisor halfway between the desk and the door, embracing him and then slapping his back. “How’s it going?”

The tall man shrugged his shoulders, as though this was an unnecessary question. “And you?” Malle replied. “Your wife, Lykke?”

“No problems
…
except for the one you’re here to solve.”

The security advisor greeted the three other officials gravely, holding Orla’s hand in a firm grip. His eyes were dark and brown and, combined with the deep creases near his mouth and the curly graying hair, gave his face a Mediterranean look, an impression underscored by his casual demeanor.

“It’s been a long time,” Malle said to Orla. He didn’t ask about his health, and certainly not about his wife and daughters, which made it clear that he was up-to-date on the details of Orla’s capsized private life. “I understand you’re the happy recipient of”—the security advisor paused for a moment as he sat on the sofa across from the chief of staff—“a mysterious package sent by some insane individual.”

“We need to find that man,” the minister declared from behind his desk.

“Or woman,” Malle replied. “I’d like to speak to Orla privately after we’re done here.”

“Yes, of course,” Almind-Enevold replied.

Malle leaned in. “But first, tell me everything. Has anyone in the ministry seen any suspicious persons in the hallways? In the courtyard or the stairs? Has anyone seen anything strange here at all these last few months? This has been planned for a
very
long time—there is no doubt about that.”

Bog Man stared at Malle with evident alarm.

“We’re looking into it,” Enevold said.

“I need to know everything. Without exception. Anything out of the ordinary. I want to see every meeting and guest list since the New Year. The person we’re chasing may be now or has been inside the ministry in order to glean a general understanding of things ahead of time, or maybe out of simple curiosity.”

“Of course, Carl,” the minister replied.

“And these two gentlemen?” Malle fastened an inquiring gaze on the beleaguered Bog Man and the Witch Doctor with the little goatee that made him look like a painter from the 1960s. Malle’s internal radar had already determined that these two were of no use, possibly even detrimental to the case.

“They’re here for the sake of
coordination
,” the minister said, almost apologetically. “If you need any assistance.”

“I’ve got my own men, Ole. I don’t want my hands tied. You know that. And no publicity.”

The minister nodded at the two men. The Witch Doctor stood, bowing slightly, and with a characteristic swoosh of his expensive clothing, left the room. Bog Man hesitated momentarily, but then he too made his exit. When he shut the door behind him, the three men left in the room didn’t even hear the click.

Knud Taasing set two shiny folders before his friend. “We’re on the right track. Our orphanage has been a favorite destination for a
very
long time. I examined 1961 issues first, of course.”

He studied Nils Jensen over the rim of his thin reading glasses and lit another menthol cigarette. “I’ve got pictures from the orphanage’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebration, and it appears as though something peculiar happened that day.”

Taasing braced one of his slender legs against a big brown cardboard box and began to stretch. The anonymous letter lay on the floor beside the box where he must have tossed it.

Nils, who had sat in a vacant chair near the window, noticed how the box didn’t budge. It probably contained reports and exposés from Taasing’s glory days, back when he consistently produced the kind of articles that reverberated across the nation—like the story of the Palestinian man
who’d
been sentenced for rape, causing Ole Almind-Enevold, then the minister of justice, to issue a blanket condemnation of all foreigners. After the scandal and the man’s shooting of the two boys at a rest area, the presumptive minister of national affairs relentlessly used the story as fuel for his personal sainthood campaign during the 2001 elections.

After that, Knud had lowered his head and accepted defeat, broken by the knowledge that his persistent articles had helped acquit the man. He left his wife, rented a small apartment in Christianshavn, and spent five discouraging years struggling as a freelancer before being offered the job at
Independent Weekend—
in spite of protests from the Ministry of National Affairs. Every morning he bicycled to the newspaper building on the harbor front, stopped to shop at the co-op on the way home, and passed his weekends in front of the television. He never discussed his feelings about the lunatic
who’d
lied to him so phenomenally, or about the two boys the Palestinian had murdered. As far as Nils knew,
he’d
never visited their graves or tried to contact their parents, and perhaps there was nothing to say anyway.

“I’ve been through every single issue of
Billed Bladet
,
Home
, and
Family Magazine
since 1961, and in the May 19, 1961 edition of
Billed Bladet
, I found this article.” Knud handed three large photocopies to the photographer. “It’s about the Kongslund foundling Inger Marie Ladegaard.”

“Foundling Discovered at Doorstep on Orphanage’s Anniversary,” the somewhat clumsy headline read above a photo of a young woman with a white nursing cap atop blond curls.

“Yes, she exists, but we already knew that. And it’s hardly a scandal.”

The journalist ignored Nils’s typically sullen reply. “I’ve been digging deeper into the name Bjergstrand,” he continued. “But I can’t find anyone with that name on the Internet, nor in any telephone books from 1990 through 2007. So we’ll have to go back further, and to do that we’ll need to check different records and browse through old telephone books. We’ll have to go back to 1961, perhaps even further.”

The photographer didn’t respond.

“Unfortunately, the clippings on the envelope don’t match those in our
Billed Bladet
from 1961, as I’d hoped they would. For now, what’s important is that the letters are multicolored, because that eliminates most magazines of the time. For example,
Danish Family Magazine
used almost exclusively black type in their headlines.
Ladies Magazine
, oddly enough, was much more progressive in terms of color in both articles and headlines. Same goes
for Billed Bladet
. But I still need to check
Home
,
Family Magazine
,
Out and About
,
and several others.”

Knud stood. He navigated a path to the window between the piles of paper. “But we have a third lead. A simple question: What was it about that letter that frightened the ministry so badly?” He returned to his desk and slammed his palm on the headline from that day’s lead story in
Independent Weekend
: “The Kongslund Affair: What Is the Orphanage Hiding?”

A photo of the old matron, Ms. Ladegaard, was featured below these provocative words. She wore a dark-blue dress with an amethyst brooch and smiled into the camera, standing next to a little girl with blond curls.