The Torso: A Detective Inspector Huss Investigation, Vol. 2 (14 page)

“Bell . . . Isabell isn’t here,” she finally said.

“No? Where is she?”

“Out. With a client.”

If they had been at home in Göteborg, Irene could have asked to come in to search the office. Now she was in Copenhagen, where she didn’t have any authority. But Jens Metz did. She hadn’t seen a trace of him since he’d entered these the premises. He must be inside somewhere. What was he doing? Was he helping her inquire after Isabell? Or had he decided to become a customer?

“Do you know when Isabell will be back?”

Petra shrugged. Irene decided to push a little harder.

“I’m not here on police business. I’m an old friend of Isabell’s and of her family, and it’s the family that needs to get in touch with her for important private reasons, you understand.”

With the last sentence she lowered her voice and sent Petra an imploring look. The girl looked confused and seemed not to know what to say. Irene took out her wallet and fished out a calling card. Under her name she wrote:

She handed the card to Petra, who took it reluctantly.

“Could you please give this card to Isabell?”

Petra nodded sulkily and closed the door.

Irene stepped into the shadow of a parked truck and kept an eye on the entrance to the building for another half hour. Jens Metz didn’t emerge.

THE RINGING OF THE telephone woke her from a deep sleep. At first she didn’t have the faintest idea where she was. The telephone kept ringing. After a while she managed to find the receiver and answer. A faint female voice speaking English informed her that it was time to wake up. It was six thirty. Irene sank back into the pillow with a groan. Her body was sore after the last night’s skinhead fight. Sleep hung treacherously in her eyelashes, and forced her eyelids to close. . . . She sat up in bed with a jerk. It was best to get up now, otherwise Peter Møller would have to wait for her again in the reception area.

She felt more awake after a long hot shower. She put on her light yellow Björn Borg T-shirt and the blue linen pants. Together with the blue trench coat it would definitely say
I’m so happy that I’m Swedish, ho ho!
but she didn’t have any other clean clothes.

She called home to her boss on her cell phone. Superintendent Andersson sounded like he had just awakened but livened up a bit when he heard that it was Irene.

“I have a good tip about the victim’s identity. His name is Marcus Tosscander, thirty-one years old, and he was a designer with an office on Kungsportsplatsen. He was working in Copenhagen just before he disappeared and he had exactly the same tattoo as—”

“Wait! I don’t have pen or paper.”

She heard him rustling around, looking for something to write on. When he returned she gave him all of the information she had on Tosscander. Andersson sounded very pleased until she declined to tell him how she had gotten the information.

“Why can’t you tell me? Is the informant reliable?”

Irene didn’t have any difficulty picturing her boss’s reaction if she described her informant: a former sumo wrestler who was gay, dressed in black silk pajamas, and owned Copenhagen’s largest gay sex shop.

“The informant is very reliable. You have to trust me when I say that the whole thing is complicated. A police officer and a doctor showed up in the investigation into the murder-mutilation of the female prostitute here in Copenhagen two years ago. The peculiar thing is that, according to the informant, there were also a police officer and a doctor in Marcus Tosscander’s life prior to his disappearance. If so, it’s an amazing coincidence. The police officer seems to have a connection to Vesterbro. Which means it could be one of the colleagues I’m working with right now. I absolutely cannot tell them what I’ve found out in case it is one of them.”

“A police officer! I don’t believe it for a second!” Andersson cleared his throat a few times before he continued. “Irene. You . . . watch out. Don’t take any risks. If it really is like you say, it may be dangerous.”

His voice revealed sincere concern. Irene realized that she wasn’t going to be able to tell the whole truth about what she had been up to the previous night.

“I’ll take care of myself. Today I’m just making copies of the reports from the investigation into the murder of Carmen Østergaard and then I’m coming straight home.”

“Good. Call if anything comes up.”

“OK. Good-bye.”

When Irene opened the curtains, she could see, to her joy, that a pale sun was actually shining on the side of the house across the street. Encouraged by this, she went down into the hotel’s cafeteria and ate a delicious Danish breakfast. She discovered to her pleasure that their coffee actually tasted quite good.

Satisfied, she went up to the room and packed the rest of her things in her bag.

Peter Møller showed up just as she was in the process of checking out.

“Good morning! Everything OK?” he asked and fired off a sunny smile.

He reminded Irene of Fredrik Stridh. Both were types who always looked bright and fresh even if there was no way they could be. This was an enviable quality that she suffered a regrettable lack of. If she had only slept five hours, as she had the night before, that’s exactly how she looked in the morning. She carefully applied her makeup and gave Møller a wide smile in return. With any luck, he would buy it. If he thought that his colleague from Sweden looked a little worn-out early this morning, let him think she had plundered the minibar in her hotel room out of loneliness. None of the Danish colleagues would learn of her private reconnaissance work around midnight.

“Morning to you, too. All’s well?” she said.

Møller took her bag before she even had time to reach for it. With his other hand, he held the door open for her as usual. Polite and well mannered but difficult to get any real understanding of, thought Irene.

 

 

 

 

 

Maybe
he
was the officer? Resolutely she forced the idea away. She might become paranoid if she started thinking along those lines.

 

IT WAS time consuming to read the reports of the interrogations in Danish. Irene had to skim through the text and try to pick out the things that seemed important. There was a risk that she might miss something essential but she comforted herself with the fact that the copier was new and efficient. She was delighted when she found the witness reports on both the police officer and the doctor. Unfortunately, the interrogator hadn’t pushed very hard during these interrogations so the material was quite slim. One of the prostitutes had fallen into the hands of the policeman; the other had encountered the doctor.

Christine Ehlers, twenty-four years of age, a junkie and street prostitute since she was a teenager, stated that she had been threatened by a man about a week before Carmen Østergaard was murdered. He had picked her up in a car and driven her to the back lot of a house that was going to be demolished. She didn’t remember the make of the car, but described the car as being big and new. When he had stopped the car he had taken off his dark overcoat. Under it he was wearing a police uniform. He started to hit her in the face and called her a whore, a slut, and the like. He got a powerful stranglehold on her and she wasn’t getting any air. In a panic, she managed to knee him in the crotch. Apparently, it hit hard where it was supposed to, because he released his grip and Christine managed to run away.

Because she was under the influence of heroin at the time and in shock after the event, she couldn’t give a description of the assailant. The only things she remembered were that he seemed to be young and relatively tall and skinny. He had spoken Danish without an accent. Stubbornly, she maintained that he had been dressed in a police uniform, hat included. She didn’t remember if he had had the hat on from the very beginning when he picked her up, or if he had put it on later. It was the dark blue dress hat, not the white summer hat.

Anne Sørensen was twenty-five years old and had been a street prostitute for a few months. Earlier, she had worked at a club but was thrown out when her drug addiction became too obvious. Just before Walpurgis Night 1997, she had been picked up by a customer traveling in a car. She also didn’t know the make of the car, but she remembered that it was red and very stylish. He had also driven to an abandoned back lot behind a house about to be demolished and he had spoken Swedish. He had told her that he was a doctor when they were in the car. When she had asked what kind of doctor he was, he hadn’t answered.

After parking the car in the dark lot, the man had taken out a black bag that had been lying in the backseat. He took out a filled hypodermic needle from the bag.

“I want you to take this first so that you will be in good shape,” he said.

Anne had become suspicious. She tried to worm her way out of it by saying that she had already taken some earlier in the evening and it was too soon for another hit. Then the man had become furious. He had screamed and threatened her: “If you don’t take the shot, I’ll beat you to death anyway!”

The last bit had scared Anne enough that she had come to her senses. She understood the man had decided to kill her and fear gave her enough extra strength so that she managed to knock the needle out of his hand. Somehow she got the car door open and managed to leap out. She escaped by running from the scene.

Both women knew who Carmen Østergaard was but neither of them were closely acquainted with her.

Irene leaned back in the borrowed desk chair. The girls’ stories were fairly similar. The back lots could be the same; however, one assailant presented himself as a police officer and the other as a doctor. And the doctor had spoken Swedish while the officer appeared to be Danish.

Marcus Tosscander had lived with a Danish police officer and he knew a doctor. “He’s worse than my doctor in Göteborg,” he had said to Tom Tanaka when he’d spoken about the police officer. A Swedish doctor who lived in Göteborg.

The telephone on the desk started ringing. She answered since no one else was in the room. “Detective Inspector Irene Huss,” she said slowly.

She tried hard to speak extra clearly, in case the person calling had a hard time understanding Swedish.

“Wonderful that I got hold of you!” It was Yvonne Stridner.

It was unnecessary to add the last part. No one else trumpeted on the phone like the professor.

“Have just spoken with Svend Blokk. There were certain details about the dismemberment process of our body that I wanted to compare with their murder-mutilation from two years ago. He mentioned that you were going to meet him today to pick up detailed autopsy reports. You don’t need to. I’ll take care of it directly with Svend. But I can say right now, it’s the same mutilator.”

Irene could only say, “Thanks.”

Maybe it wasn’t the right answer, or Stridner misunderstood, or maybe she just wasn’t listening.

“No problem. It’s no extra trouble. You take care of the police work, and I’ll handle the pathology. But isn’t it remarkable that this type of murderer is operating in both Göteborg and Copenhagen? There is some distance between the cities, at least 180 miles. And Öresund is in between.”

At that moment, Irene realized that the professor was wrong. It wasn’t at all remarkable since they were probably dealing with two murderers. A Danish police officer and a Swedish doctor. It could, of course, also be someone who commuted between the two cities, but the few descriptions that existed indicated there were two murderers.

Stridner was saying something else into the receiver. In order to cover her lapse, Irene mumbled something inarticulate in a tone of agreement.

“Wonderful! Then we’re agreed,” Stridner said.

A click indicated that the professor had hung up. Irene did the same and wondered what she and Stridner had agreed on.

Irene was busy with the copying until almost twelve o’clock. Then Jens Metz opened the door to the office and stuck in his round face.

“Are you coming to lunch?”

“Yes, thanks. I’m finished now.”

“You’re efficient,” Metz commented, smiling jovially.

He hadn’t said a word about his visit to Scandinavian Models. Maybe he would do so during lunch? She would wait and see. She gathered up her papers and put them in her bag. It became considerably heavier but she wanted to take them along. She hoped to drive home directly after lunch.

Peter Møller kept them company. They ate lunch at a very smoky pub behind Tivoli. All three ate beef patties fried with onions, served with potatoes. Møller and Metz each had a large beer. Irene declined with the excuse that she would be driving.

“The alcohol will be gone before you get to Helsingborg,” said Metz.

“Stupid to take the risk.” Irene smiled. In order to change the subject, she said, “You’ll have to give my best to Beate Bentsen and thank her for being so accommodating. Not to mention a big thanks to the two of you for all your help.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Metz and raised his beer glass.

Mostly to have something to say, Irene said, “Not to be nosy, but what does Mr. Bentsen do?”

Metz laughed. “There’s never been a Mr. Bentsen.”

“But she talked about a son,” Irene said sheepishly.

“Yes, you’ve already met him,” Jens Metz grinned.

Irene caught the warning look Peter Møller sent his colleague, but Metz didn’t. He was fully concentrated on his beer glass. When he finally managed to tear it from his lips, Irene continued, “I’ve met Beate Bentsen’s son?”

“Of course! Emil, who hangs out at Tom Tanaka’s. Emil Bentsen. Peter said that you met him in the store yesterday.”