The Forgotten Girls (19 page)

That last part was a lie, Louise thought. She was willing to bet that they bought the cheap meat as well.

René’s eyes wandered. “That was a mistake,” he stammered. “Bitten is right. I don’t know anything.”

“But you know that Big Thomsen drives the van?”

He had started sweating, and his eyes were suddenly frightened as he turned toward them.

“Please don’t tell him what I said,” he pleaded. “It was a mistake.”

Bitten sat behind him, curling herself up while she kept shaking her head.

Louise shrugged. It was sad to see the degree to which they were subjected to the hierarchy that had been built up while they were still in school. She could hardly believe that this kind of thing could last all the way into adulthood. It had to be more than friendship tying that gang together, she thought as she got up.

René and Bitten stayed seated and watched them leave when they offered to show themselves out.

“T
HAT WAS HOT
!” Eik said approvingly as they walked toward the car. “I like it when you get mad.”

“Shut up,” she snapped, getting into the car. The couple were genuinely scared senseless at the thought that they were the ones to reveal that Ole Thomsen and Frandsen the butcher were doing business under the table together.

They were driving down the forest road toward Lerbjerg when Louise suggested that she had better call Mik and tell him to check up on Big Thomsen.

“So that’s why nobody knows anything about that van,” she said. “He’s got everyone under his thumb so they won’t say anything that might provoke him. I never understood how he
managed to build up that position. It seems like he’s got something on everyone so they have to yield to him.”

She shook her head and got her cell phone from her bag.

“Could he be our guy?” Eik asked as they drove through the last intersection before Lerbjerg. “He was around the area in 1991 as well.”

“Then it had to be Big Thomsen who raped Bitten, even though she was there waiting for him,” Louise said, but then she nodded a second later. “It’s not impossible, I guess. He’s clearly in touch with his inner primitive beast.”

Louise had to go through the switchboard before being transferred to Mik and she briefly regretted not opting to call his cell phone. She still had his number on speed dial.

“Mik Rasmussen,” he answered, sounding rushed.

“Ole Thomsen is the one who drives the white van,” she began. “He’s also Bitten’s lover so it’s a double bonus. The vehicle may be registered under the name of Lars Frandsen, the butcher.” She told him about the illegal meat sales.

“We’ve already spoken with the butcher. It’s his car but he flatout denies that it’s been in the woods. He says it’s a company car.”

Louise sighed.
Cocky as always
, she thought.

“Ole Thomsen is the driver. So he’s the one you need to talk to, and he needs to be busted for the meat thing along with Frandsen.”

She nodded to Eik, who signaled that he wanted to get out of the car. They had pulled into her parents’ courtyard.

“We’ve already got our sights on him,” Mik said. “It appears that he’s been sleeping his way through half of central Zealand. At least his alibis for the times that we’re interested in were provided by several different women. But I’m not buying those stories. Something is very wrong here.”

L
OUISE WAVED TO
Jonas as he appeared by the kitchen door. She hadn’t had a chance to call and let him know that she would be by to pick him up. She had missed him.

“Hey!” she called out and smiled when her son walked out into the courtyard to say hello to Eik. He was such a great kid. Louise walked over to give him a hug.

“Do you feel like going home?” she asked before greeting her father, who came around the corner from the backyard.

“You have to come in the house and listen to what the boy’s been doing with his time while he’s been laid up,” he said and beckoned them inside. “It’s just amazing what these young kids can do with their computers.”

“We’ll probably have to listen to it some other time, Dad,” Louise cut in, shooting Eik an apologetic smile. “We have to get back to the city.”

Her father turned and gave her a stern look. “It’ll just take a
second, and of course you have the time to listen to what Jonas can do,” he said, taking it for granted that they would follow him. “He’s very gifted, you know.”

Jonas shrugged a little, looking self-conscious.

“It’s nothing, really,” he whispered. “But Grandpa seems to think I’m some sort of musical genius.”

“That’s grandparents, I guess,” Eik said, good-humoredly following Louise’s father. In the living room he walked over and introduced himself to her mother and immediately accepted her offer of coffee.

Louise was still standing in the doorway. The inside of the old timber-frame house had been completely renovated, the walls covered with grayish wood and tile on the floor. The living room opened up into the kitchen where Louise’s mother had insisted on leaving the old woodstove even though she used a new gas stove for cooking.

Her mother walked over to the cupboard, and of course she got out the mugs she herself had thrown and fired. Before Louise knew it, Eik was following her mother outside to the wing that had been set up as a pottery. As the door closed behind them, she heard him inquiring with interest about the things her mother made out there.

“All right, I’m ready,” said Jonas, coming out of the guest room after gathering his stuff.

“No,” Louise hurried to say. “I want to hear what you’ve made.”

Not that she expected to be able to tell it apart from what she had listened to through the door to his room, but she wanted to show that she cared about his interests.

He opened his computer on the dining table and asked her if she was ready.

Louise nodded and sat down as he turned up the music. Just then, her mother and Eik walked in through the kitchen door, Eik carrying a small green vase that she’d apparently given him.

He put down the vase and listened for a minute before nodding appreciatively.

“That’s good stuff,” he said and closed his eyes as if tasting the notes. “It’s got kind of a Nick Cave sound but then not really—it’s more contemporary. Who made it?”

“The kid did, of course,” Louise’s father boasted. “That’s his music.”

Eik raised one bushy eyebrow and didn’t seem to understand.

“Jonas makes music,” Louise pitched in. “He’s got several songs on YouTube, and they get played all the time.”

Jonas nodded shyly.

“What do you call yourself again?” Louise’s father asked.

“Joe H,” he answered quietly. “And the song is called ‘Back to Normal.’ ”

“As in Jonas Holm,” her father enthused with a big smile.

“Well, I’ll be,” Eik exclaimed, sounding impressed.

“One of his pieces is on the list of the most popular songs on YouTube,” her father went on.

Jonas smiled a little more confidently.

“It’s what?” Louise exclaimed with surprise and took a step back.

“I told you the boy is on to something,” her father said.

“Did you think I was kidding when I said I wanted to play at Roskilde Festival?” Jonas asked Louise.

“Honestly, yes,” she admitted. She asked him to play the song again.

“I told him we need to talk to Kjær,” her father grumbled.
Kjær was the old family lawyer. “All the stuff about copyright and those kinds of things needs to be looked over by someone who knows about it.”

“Okay, Grandpa,” Jonas laughed. “We’ll take a look at it.”

It wasn’t that long ago that the boy had started calling Louise’s parents Grandma and Grandpa. It wasn’t something they had talked about. Louise had just suddenly realized that he was saying it and that it sounded natural. She was pleased.

“Come on then, superstar. Let’s get back to the city,” she said, swatting at him.

W
HERE ARE YOU
?” Camilla yelled into the phone as Louise sat squeezed in with Jonas in the front seat of the big four-wheeler. Eik had insisted that his blood alcohol level from the previous night had long since dropped and had gotten behind the wheel.

“On our way home from Hvalsø. How are things with you guys?”

“Why don’t you come and have dinner with us?” she asked. “Markus was disappointed, to put it lightly, that we got married without him and now he insists that we at least go and have a nice dinner and invite you along.”

Jonas shoved his cell phone in Louise’s face.

“Markus just texted me,” he mimed, pointing to the phone display. “He wants to know if I can make it.”

“What time were you thinking?” Louise asked, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the thought.

“Right now!” Camilla laughed excitedly. “We’ll drink champagne and have a lovely dinner. Frederik made arrangements for a menu with Danish lobster at Restaurant Raadhuskælderen.”

Louise sighed. It did feel strange not to be part of celebrating her friend’s big day.

“I’m not the one driving,” she said. “Jonas and I are riding with Eik.”

“Just bring him along,” Camilla bubbled happily. “That’ll make it an even number for our table.”

“He probably has other plans?” Louise mumbled and realized that Jonas was already including their chauffeur in the invitation.

“But we need to go home and get changed first,” Louise objected after Jonas and Eik had both made it clear that they were game for an impromptu wedding dinner.

“Don’t be silly; just come as you are. After all, the whole idea is to keep it informal. They’re setting up a special table for us in a corner of the back garden. Just come in from the Stendertorv Square side.”

Louise was familiar with the restaurant in the basement of the old city hall. She just wasn’t in the mood for razzle and celebration. They still needed to get ahold of Lillian down at Eliselund, but of course she was gone for the day so they would have to wait until morning anyway.

She closed her eyes for a second to get a grip and settle herself. Her demons were circling. It wasn’t the sorrow or the feeling of guilt. She had put those behind her—at least for a while, she thought. It was Big Thomsen that worried her. It was always like that. She had always been able to avoid him, but now he kept showing up everywhere and it had her rattled.

She had seen the same insecurity in René’s eyes, but Bitten had been difficult to read. She had found only emptiness when
she attempted to see behind her glazed-over eyes. Louise had no doubt that her anger had been real when René started giving too much away about the white van. But she didn’t have the chance to register if Bitten was angry that he’d exposed Big Thomsen or if her reaction was caused by fear.

“What should we bring them?” Eik asked as they approached Roskilde.

Louise shrugged. Flowers didn’t seem right now that she knew that the hotel room had been covered with a truckload of rose petals the previous night, and they didn’t need champagne, either.

She shook her head, unable to think of anything, and felt a chill coming on from exhaustion.

“I know!” she burst out, suddenly hitting on an idea as they drove toward the square. She turned to look at Jonas. “We need to go somewhere with an Internet connection—maybe they’ve got Wi-Fi at the café. And then we need to download a song to your computer.”

She pointed ahead and instructed Eik to drive in and park on Stendertorv Square.

“Camilla always said that she would only get married if Big Fat Snake played at her wedding. I want you to find ‘Bonsoir Madame.’ ”

“All right,” Jonas mumbled. “Then we’ll have to go to the café because I don’t have that one.”

She noticed a smile twitching at the corner of Eik’s mouth and thought that he was probably much more in tune with the boy’s taste in music than hers.

S
MALL TORCHES HAD
been lit on the sidewalk, and the archway leading into the back garden was decorated with flowers.

Louise stopped to breathe in the smell of the white lilies.

“How many guests are invited?” Eik asked, pulling down on his T-shirt a little although it didn’t seem to otherwise bother him that he wasn’t dressed for a fancy wedding dinner. He had stopped by the corner store to buy an extra pack of cigarettes while they downloaded the music.

“I think it’s just us,” Louise answered doubtfully, kicking herself for not having picked a more presentable outfit for work that day.

She ran her fingers through her long hair, tousling it a bit.

“Shall we?” Eik offered her his arm. She accepted somewhat hesitantly, resting her hand on his arm while Jonas led the way through the gate in the old red-brick wall.

Louise stopped in surprise as they stepped onto the cobblestone. To the right at the back of the garden, a light canvas was suspended above two tables that had been pushed together. Torches were lit all the way around, screening off the private party from the other tables, and the tables were set with white tablecloths and tall candelabras. There were no other guests yet in the garden but several tables had small, white reservation cards.

“It doesn’t look like anyone else was invited but us,” Jonas said before looking up at a pair of speakers mounted in each corner of the back garden. “I’m just going to run inside to see if I can set up the music.”

“Holy moly,” Louise mumbled. The setup was impressive, but standing there with Eik felt a little awkward; neither really knew what to do with themselves until the host couple showed up.

Just then they heard the sound of horseshoes on the pavement, and a carriage came around the corner. When Jonas came back outside, he gave a quick nod to signal that it was all
under control. Louise felt Eik’s hand on her back as the carriage drawn by neighing horses stopped in front of them and they saw Camilla, smiling and waving with flowers in her hair and holding a large bouquet.

Markus was quick. He chivalrously jumped down from his seat next to the driver and walked around to open the door for his mother and Frederik.

“Congratulations!” they all shouted in unison.

Louise had brought the two yellow roses that Jørgen had picked for her and she now passed them on to the newlyweds. Jonas had stolen a lily from the decoration, which he held out for Camilla, who repaid him with a kiss and asked them to come inside.

“W
ELL
, I’
VE HEARD
that you’re married now. And I’ve heard that you don’t fool around,” the voice of singer Anders Blichfeldt sounded from the speakers just as Frederik and Camilla walked into the back garden, and two waiters came up the stairs from the restaurant with champagne and glasses.

“… Bonsoir Madame. I know who you are, Madame. You used to be a Mademoiselle, I know you too well…”

Louise couldn’t help but laugh when she saw her friend kick off her high heels and dance around barefoot with her arms over her head while singing along. Then she surrendered and forgot all about Bitten and Big Thomsen when Eik grabbed her and started swinging her around.

“Is this a private party?” a younger couple asked, looking somewhat timidly at the four of them dancing in the otherwise empty back garden.

“No, come on in,” Camilla shouted while Frederik asked the waiters to get more glasses.

After the song was finished, they made their way to the table beneath the canvas where candles had now been lit.

“I’d like to propose a toast to my beautiful wife,” Frederik opened once they were all seated. He looked at Jonas and Markus and toasted in Louise and Eik’s direction. “Thank you for dropping everything you were doing in order to celebrate this evening with us. I’ve come to realize that I’d better get used to acting quickly now that Camilla has come into my life.” He gazed at her lovingly. “And so that’s what I did today.”

“We’ve had the most amazing day,” Camilla said after they toasted. She also gestured toward the young couple, who had picked a table as far from the wedding party as possible. “We picked up Markus after school and then we went sailing on the bay.”

“You’ve both been acting like a pair of loonies,” her son interjected. “It was so embarrassing when you came into my school wearing that and with flowers in your hair. What do you think my friends are gonna say?”

Camilla shrugged and suggested that maybe they would tell him how nice it was that he had a happy mother.

“What have you guys been up to?” she asked, leaning forward with curiosity.

“We went to see Bodil Parkov and her husband,” Eik said, asking for a draft beer instead of champagne.

Louise put her foot on top of his and pushed down, making him turn toward her in surprise. He didn’t know Camilla, and she hadn’t had a chance to instruct him on which things not to talk about around her friend. It had taken her years to establish watertight dividers between the things they could talk about and what she needed to hold back when they would get together privately.

“Yes,” Louise hurried to say. “It’s been a busy day but then
we were able to pick up Jonas on the way so that worked out well.”

She was about to talk about Jonas’s song when Camilla interrupted her. “Her husband?” she exclaimed. “Bodil Parkov isn’t married!”

Louise looked at her quizzically.

“Uhh, yes, she is,” she replied, annoyed. “She’s been married to Jørgen for as long as I can recall.”

Camilla put down her silverware and leaned forward. “The Bodil Parkov who worked as director of Eliselund until March 1980 was unwed. Otherwise she wouldn’t even have been eligible for the position. The job required that you be single and live at the institution.”

“I guess she had a secret then!” Eik interjected, leaning in toward Louise when the waiter arrived to switch out his empty glass. “But then that might be understandable considering the guy she’s got hanging around at home.”

“Hey, now,” Louise snapped at him irritably.

“Bodil Parkov was a spinster,” Camilla said, “and they said at Eliselund that she had dedicated her entire life to working with the mentally disabled because her family had been personally affected.”

“Yes,” said Louise. “Her husband was in a work accident and suffered a brain injury.”

“According to the
Blue Book
, she’s single,” Camilla maintained, but then she clapped her hands and gave Frederik a big kiss as the two waiters brought in large plates of lobster just then. “I sold the story about Eliselund to
Roskilde Tidende
, by the way,” she said once the lobster was on the table. “It sounded like they were interested in entering into a freelance agreement with me.”

“So you’re going to start working as a journalist again?”
Louise leaned toward Eik to make room as a small glass bowl with a slice of lemon was placed next to her plate.

“They were looking for people for the crime section,” Camilla said, smiling as she broke a claw off her lobster. “They just laid off the entire editorial office and now they only want freelancers in order to keep the costs down.”

Louise wasn’t really paying attention. She noticed that Eik had put his hand on her back. It tickled as he ran his thumb down her spine, and she realized that her foot was still on his boot. She wrapped it around his ankle and kept leaning toward him even though the waiter had already gone.

“E
IK
…”
SHE MUMBLED
the following morning when she woke up with her lips against his naked chest. “That’s not a very common name. Were you named after someone?”

He had his arm around her, his fingers tangled through her long hair. After the wedding dinner, the party had moved to Frederik and Camilla’s house. In her champagne buzz Louise had granted Jonas a skip day since he had been ill. So they had stayed the night out there.

Jonas slept in Markus’s room, and Eik had followed Louise when she went to make up a bed in one of the guest rooms down the hall.

“There was a musician once by the name of Eik Skaløe. Do you remember him?” he asked, pushing down the covers a little. It was warm in the room even though Louise had gotten up at some point in the night to open a window. “If I got anything from someone else, it’s probably a remnant of his soul.”

“He disappeared, didn’t he?” Louise asked, propping herself up on her elbow to look down at his furrowed face. “He was the lead singer of that band, Steppeulvene, and quite young.”

Eik opened his eyes and looked at her. “He was twenty-five when he committed suicide somewhere between India and Pakistan.”

“Is it his musical part that’s inside you?” she asked, running her hand down his chest.

“Hmm,” he mumbled. “I used to think maybe it was the desire to let go. I’ve often thought that it would be a relief, but I’ve never had the courage, which probably means I don’t want it enough after all.”

He pulled her down toward him.

“What do you want to get away from?”

Louise kept looking at him even though he had turned his face away and was looking out at the early-morning sun and the hazy blue skies. He grumbled a little, and she tugged on him.

“What do you want to get away from?” she repeated and put her hands around his face.

Finally he turned his head and looked at her with pain in his eyes and a dry laugh.

“Me,” he said. “It’s completely trivial. A lonely heart and pain and something that never heals.”

He had closed his eyes again while speaking.

“I had a girlfriend who disappeared from a boat in the Mediterranean. The boat was found drifting around outside a small harbor, and the two she had been sailing with washed ashore the very next day. But she never turned up.”

“So she drowned?”

At first he didn’t answer; then he inhaled deeply.

“I don’t know. When they searched the boat, they found the other two people’s possessions, but all her things were missing.”

“So you think she ran off?” Louise whispered.

He shrugged. “I don’t know and I probably never will.”

The silence grew heavy between them.

“I had sailed with them to Rome but then we had a fight and I took off. I went out and got drunk and when I came back, they had sailed on. I stayed in Italy for a few days before I began to hitchhike home, and it wasn’t until I got back to Denmark that I heard the news of what had happened.”