The Corpse Flower Hörbuch

Anne Mette Hancock

• Herausgeber: Isis Audio
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: A Kaldan and Schäfer Mystery
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Zeit:8 Std. 30 min

Sprecher:Karen Cass

Beschreibung

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo meets Sharp Objects in this internationally bestselling thriller, for fans of Jo Nesbo and Henning Mankell Danish journalist Heloise Kaldan is in the middle of a nightmare. One of her sources has been caught lying, and she could lose her job over it. And then she receives the first in a series of cryptic letters from an alleged killer. Anna Kiel is wanted for murder but hasn't been seen by anyone in three years. When the reporter who first wrote about the case is found murdered in his apartment, detective Erik Schafer comes up with the first lead. Has Anna Kiel struck again? If so, why does every clue point directly to Heloise Kaldan? As Heloise starts digging deeper she realises that to tell Anna's story she will have to revisit her darkest past, and confront the one person she swore she'd never see again…

Leseprobe

SWIFT PRESS

First published in English in the United States of America by Crooked Lane Books 2021

First published in Great Britain by Swift Press 2022

Originally published in Denmark by Lindhardt & Ringhof 2017

Copyright © Anne Mette Hancock 2017

The right of Anne Mette Hancock to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80075-071-5

eISBN: 9781800750722

To my parents

CHAPTER

1

ANNA REGULARLY DREAMED about killing him. About creeping up on him and swiftly running the blade across his throat. That was why, on this particular morning, she didn’t sit up in bed with a jolt but calmly blinked as she woke from yet another dream that left a kaleidoscope of violent images on the inside of her eyelids and filled her with excitement.

Is it over?

She lay still in the darkness as reality sunk in.

She checked the clock on the tiled floor next to her bed: 5:37 am. It was the longest she had slept since renting the house.

A dog’s barking echoed through the cloisters of the old monastery on the neighboring street. Two barks followed by a short, suppressed howl, then total silence. Anna raised herself up on her elbows and listened. She was about to lie down again when she heard a spluttering car approaching slowly.

She got out of bed and quickly made her way to one of the bedroom’s two windows. A wave of unease washed over her. She opened one of the faded green shutters slightly, sending a ray of morning sun through the room in a narrow beam, and looked down into the street two floors below her. Apart from a cat waving its tail languidly on the wall of the overgrown courtyard garden of the building opposite, Rue des Trois Chapons lay deserted.

Anna scanned the houses.

Her gaze stopped at the ground-floor window of the building across the road. It was wide open. Normally, all the windows in that house were covered with shutters. This was the first time she had seen any sign of life in the run-down property. The dark hole in the wall seemed to zoom in on her like a probing eye.

Her fingers started tingling, and she felt her pulse throb in her ears.

Is it him? Have they found me?

She stayed hidden behind the shutters until she’d gotten her breathing back under control. Then she nodded in an effort to reassure herself. There was no one down there. No one was hiding in the shadows.

In fact, very few people frequented Rue des Trois Chapons. The small street ran from the church on the square to the town’s high street and was winding and narrow. You could touch the cobblestone houses on both sides by simply extending your arms. At street level, a sweet stench revealed that stray cats sought refuge there at night. They’d lurch and squeal pitifully in their search for company. But Anna rarely saw any people here. Not in this alleyway.

She closed the window and walked naked up the uneven stone steps. On the rooftop terrace she turned on the water hose, and it started wriggling on the tiles. She picked it up and washed herself in the spray. The cold water hurt, her body still warm from sleep, but she didn’t flinch.

She brushed off the water and raked her fingers through her wet hair. She let her fingertips sink into her hollow cheeks and studied her reflection in the window of the terrace door. She had lost weight. Not much, no more than maybe three or four pounds, but her breasts were smaller, her arms lean and her face gaunt. She couldn’t decide what she looked like more: an overgrown child or an old woman. Both made her stomach turn.

She put on a jersey dress and a pair of espadrilles and walked downstairs to the kitchen, where she found a lump of baguette and a jar of fig jam. She ate by the open window and listened to the clatter of stalls being assembled on the market square.

Yesterday, she had sent the letter.

She had made the three-hour drive to Cannes, where she’d first picked up the FedEx package at La Poste on Rue de Mimont. Back in the car, she had ripped it open and made sure the money was inside. Then she’d popped the letter into the post box outside the post office and driven back to Rue des Trois Chapons.

In a few days, she would send another letter. And then another.

In the meantime, all she could do was wait. And pray. She swallowed the last mouthful of baguette and put on a cap, grabbed her backpack and left the house. She walked down the high street to the market in the square, where she stopped between the stalls and shoppers to savor the atmosphere.

A group of children had gathered around a small, rickety table. On the table was a cardboard box, and inside it, a kid goat was being fondled by the children’s eager hands. A sturdy man in dirty dungarees pushed his way between a pair of twin boys and stuffed a bottle into the goat’s mouth. With the other hand, he held out a plastic basket to the parents who were watching and smiling at their children’s excitement. Reluctantly they fished out some coins from their pockets and tossed them into the basket. The man thanked them mechanically and immediately yanked the bottle from the mouth of the hungry goat, milk spraying all over.

Anna watched the man repeat the performance. She was about to angrily snatch the bottle from his hand when she noticed an elderly couple sitting under a flourishing wisteria at the café across the street.

The man was bald and wearing a bright-yellow polo shirt. His attention was fixed on a croissant. His shirt was what had caught Anna’s eye, but it was the small, apple-cheeked woman in the chair next to him that made her stop dead in her tracks.

She didn’t have time to register what the woman was wearing or eating. All she saw was the camera she was holding up and the look of disbelief on her face as she stared directly at Anna.

Anna turned and walked with measured steps to the nearest street corner and turned around it.

Then she started to run.

CHAPTER

2

“IT’S NOT THE same thing. It’s not even close to being the same thing.”

Detective Sergeant Erik Schäfer looked perplexedly at his colleague across the desk.

He and Lisa Augustin had shared an office for almost a year, and not a day had gone by without them having an amicable but heated discussion of some sort. Today was no exception.

“Sure it is,” she said. “You’re just from an older generation, so you have a different mind-set. Society has brainwashed all of us into believing that one thing is completely normal and socially acceptable while the other is morally up there with fraud and manslaughter. Ultimately there’s no difference between the two, but for reasons unknown to us, we’ve decided to think there is.” Augustin emphasized her point by waving with the half-finished turkey sandwich in her hand.

“Right, explain it to me again, then,” Erik Schäfer said. “You’re telling me there is no difference between having sex and getting a massage? Same ball game?”

“I’m telling you that they’re both physically satisfying at a very intimate level. Imagine that you and Connie have both booked a full-body massage—”

Schäfer found the prospect highly unlikely.

“—and your massage therapist is a woman, hers a man. You’re both shown into a small, dimly lit room with some sort of bed-like device. You undress, and then you let a total stranger rub their oily hands up and down your naked body. You can smell the rose oil, meditative seductive feel-good music is playing, while you lie on your separate beds thinking, ‘Oh, that’s great, please don’t stop, yes, right there, oh, that feels so good.’”

“You’ve got mustard on your chin.” Schäfer looked at her matter-of-factly and pointed to the yellow stain.

She found a crumpled napkin in the Subway sandwich bag in front of her and wiped the mustard off while she continued to build her case.

“Afterwards, you and Connie meet up, pay the check, and tell each other how wonderful it was. You’ve never felt better, and no one seems upset by the fact that the other person has just been physically satisfied by a stranger. Quite the contrary, in fact. You actually agree that you really ought to do this more often.” She turned up the palms of her hands and shrugged wildly, implying that you had to be exceptionally stupid not to see the logic of her argument.

Schäfer blinked a couple of times. “So, you’re saying that getting a massage should be as forbidden as having sex with someone other than your partner?”

“No, dummy. I’m saying that both ought to be equally legit.”

Erik Schäfer’s eyes widened.

“It’s a scientific fact,” she continued. “Marital bliss increases with fewer restrictions in a relationship; couples would be far less likely to split up if especially the wife was allowed to hook up with someone other than her husband.”

“You’re full of shit!”

Augustin laughed out loud.

“This it all just because you think like a man,” Schäfer went on, referring to the fact that in her twenty-eight years, Lisa Augustin had scored more women than he had in nearly twice that amount of time.

“You don’t believe me?” She turned 180 degrees in her chair and was starting to pound the keyboard on her computer to find the evidence for her claim when Schäfer’s phone rang.

“Saved by the bell,” he laughed, and answered the call. “Hello?”

“Hi, there’s a woman down here who wants to talk to you.” The voice on the other end belonged to a receptionist on the ground floor of police headquarters.

“What’s her name?”

“She won’t say.”

“She won’t say?” Schäfer echoed. “Why the hell not?”

Augustin stopped typing and looked up at him with a frown.

“She’ll only say that she has something important to show you. Apparently it’s about one of your murder investigations from three years ago.”

Schäfer regularly received emails and phone calls from members of the public who thought they had valuable information to contribute. It was rare, however, for someone to turn up in person, and even rarer for them to have information about a case that old.

“All right, get an officer to take her up to the second floor and put her in interview room one.”

He hung up and stood.

“Who was that?” Augustin asked, nodding to draw his attention to the button on his trousers, which he had discreetly opened under his desk to make room for his stomach while he ate his lunch.

“That was my wife,” Schäfer replied. He pulled in his stomach and buttoned his pants. “She’s just had sex with the gardener, so she thought I deserved an Indian head massage. The massage therapist is making her way up the stairs as we speak.”

CHAPTER

3

FINE, ALMOST SILENT September rain descended upon Copenhagen for the fifth day in a row. The summer, which was long over, had been grayer than usual, and it was starting to feel like the four seasons had been replaced by one long, muddy autumn.

Heloise Kaldan was closing her kitchen window, where water was dripping onto the windowsill, when her cell phone started buzzing.

It had been ringing off the hook all weekend. This time she didn’t recognize the number. She rejected the call and popped a dark-green capsule in the Nespresso machine, and immediately it started spluttering out a pitch-black lungo.

From her living room she had a view of the huge, verdigris dome of the Marble Church. The old attic apartment on the corner of Olfert Fischers Gade had been neither spacious nor appealing when she had bought it. It hadn’t even had a real bathroom, and the old kitchen, which was now Heloise’s favorite room, had been downright disgusting. But from the small living room balcony, she had a clear view of the Marble Church, and that was one of the few criteria she had insisted on from the estate agent: she’d have to be able to see the dome from at least one window in the apartment.

As a child, she had seen her father every other weekend, and the dome had been their special place. Every other Saturday they had first gone to get hot chocolate and cream cakes at Conditori La Glace, where he had charmed all the waitresses, and then strolled down Bredgade toward the church, where they had made their way up the winding stairs with familiar ease and crossed the squeaky floorboards in the loft under the roof before sitting down on one of the benches in the cupola at the top.

Snuggled up, they had savored their view of Copenhagen. At times the city had been covered in snow, at other times bathed in sunshine, but mostly it had just been gray and windswept. Her father had pointed out historical buildings and told her long, spellbinding tales about the country’s old kings and queens. She had sat there listening, gazing at him with an expression that revealed that in her eyes, he was the nicest and wisest man in the whole wide world.

On every visit, he had taught her three new words she was to practice before their next meeting.

“Right, let me see,” he had said as he moistened the tip of his finger and pretended to be leafing through an invisible dictionary.

“Aha! Today’s words are braggart, baroque, and . . . opulent.”

Then he had explained their meaning and given examples of amusing contexts they could be used in, and Heloise had lapped it all up. She had loved the times the two of them spent together at the top of the church, and it was there, cuddled up safely against his big belly, that her love of storytelling had been born.

In the first apartment she had moved into as an adult, she’d had an unobstructed view of the dome from her bedroom window, and over time it had become her lucky mascot: a memento of a safe and meaningful childhood. Whenever she traveled, she missed the dome more than anything.

It was, however, rare for her to be standing as she was now, looking toward the church on an early Monday afternoon. Normally she would be at an editorial meeting at the newspaper where she worked, discussing this week’s main issues and planning her research.

But not today.

Today’s papers lay spread out in front of her on the kitchen table. The Skriver story was on the front page of every single one of them.

She opened page two of Demokratisk Dagblad, her workplace for the past five years, and read the editorial. The editor in chief was apologizing for a story published a few days earlier about the fashion mogul Jan Skriver’s investment in an environmental disaster of a textile factory in Bangalore that used child labor. The paper had “acted naïvely in its search for the truth,” he wrote. The piece was filled with pathos and well-choreographed hand-wringing, and its sole purpose was to make the paper appear honest, neutral, and—this was the crucial bit—to dodge any management responsibility.

Fair enough. It wasn’t the editor in chief’s fault. It was hers. She had written the story, she had trusted her source, and she had allowed something resembling trust to trump due diligence.

How the hell could she have been so stupid? Why hadn’t she checked and double-checked her facts? Why had she trusted him?

Her cell phone started vibrating again. This time it was a number she couldn’t dismiss. She let it ring three times before she answered in a weary voice.

“Kaldan speaking.”

“Hi, it’s me. Were you asleep?” Her editor, Karen Aagaard, sounded tense.

“No, why?”

“Your voice sounds a little rusty, that’s all.”

“I’m up.”

Heloise had been up most of last night and had finished off the bottle of white wine she and Gerda had opened yesterday. She had mulled over the story and examined it from all angles, reviewed every single detail in the course of events in an attempt to get to grips with it, but no matter how hard she’d tried, it had remained blurred, fuzzy. Or perhaps she just didn’t like what she was seeing? She was a journalist—a damn good one, too—and it just wasn’t like her to be so horribly wrong. She was furious with herself— and with him.

“I know I told you to take today off,” Karen Aagaard said, “but The Shovel wants to see you.”

Carl-Johan Scowl, aka The Shovel, was a greasy garden gnome of a man who worked as readers’ editor at Demokratisk Dagblad, taking his lead from the guidelines for good press ethics. He dealt with readers’ complaints about errors in the newspaper’s stories, and whenever he knocked on your door, you knew it would be a long day, maybe a long week, and possibly the end of your career.

“Again?” Heloise closed her eyes and let her head fall backward. She felt emotionally drained at the prospect of yet another exhausting review of the sequence of events. They had been over it three times already.

“Yes, you need to come in so that we can finish it off. There are still a few things he wants to go over before we can move on. Surely you’d like that too?”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Heloise said, and hung up.

She grabbed her black leather jacket, kicked aside a pile of junk mail on the doormat, and slammed the door behind her.

* * *

Demokratisk Dagblad’s offices were in a listed building in Store Strandstræde whose antiquated, regal expression and decor matched the paper’s conservative views. The vaulted ceilings were high, the walls decorated with handmade wallpaper, and the glass in the old casement windows was so thin that Heloise always froze her butt off during the winter months.

She parked her bicycle in front of the building and nodded to a couple of guys from the paper’s sales department who were smoking, sheltered from the rain on a café bench across the street. A black awning stretched out above them, filled to bursting with water, and drops of rain trickled down the big metal posts that held it up. Heloise watched the canvas, half expecting it to split above their heads.

One of the men returned her greeting with a cheerful, “Hey, Kaldan, what’s up?”

His buddy leaned toward him without taking his eyes off Heloise and whispered something that made them both smirk.

She turned away and swiped her card through the electronic lock to the right of the entrance. She entered her personal code, and the door made a buzzing, mechanical sound before it opened.

Heloise climbed the stairs to the news desk on the third floor and jogged up, taking two steps at a time.

Karen Aagaard was waiting for her on the landing. They had always been on good terms, and Heloise liked and respected her, but they had never been close. Heloise knew that Aagaard lived in ritzy Hellerup, that she was married and that her son was in the military, but apart from that she had no notion of her editor’s private life—or vice versa. It was a level of intimacy that suited Heloise just fine, especially today.

“Let me guess: you don’t believe in umbrellas, is that it?” Aagaard studied Heloise’s soaked clothing quizzically.

Heloise smiled and shook off some of the raindrops. “Yeah, I’m just not that grown up yet.”

“I assume that you’ve read today’s editorial?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

Heloise gave a light shrug. “What else could Mikkelsen write?”

“I suppose you’re right, but he was seriously pissed off when I spoke with him this morning. If you hadn’t produced so many of the paper’s scoops this year, I really think he’d kick you out on your ass. I’m still not a hundred percent sure you’re in the clear.”

“Thanks. That’s exactly the pep talk I was hoping for.” Heloise opened the door to the open plan office. “After you, boss.”

“There’s nothing more to the story than what you’ve already told us, is there? Something The Shovel might dig up that I should know about?”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know. Anything that might make you appear worse than you already do? And a spontaneous no would have been much more reassuring, let me tell you.” Karen Aagaard looked at her over the rim of her tortoiseshell glasses.

Blurred images of naked bodies, sweat, and salty kisses appeared like a runaway slideshow in Heloise’s mind. She wanted to be helpful, because she didn’t enjoy having her name on a story that didn’t hold up to scrutiny, but she also didn’t want to share details of her private life. Not just because it was none of her boss’s business. She was also too proud to admit to having trusted Martin.

“No,” she said, placing a reassuring hand on her editor’s shoulder. “There’s nothing more to the story. Let’s just get it over with, shall we? Where’s The Shovel?”

“He should be here by now.”

Karen Aagaard stuck her head inside the conference room halfway down the editorial corridor. There was no one there.

“He was still in his car when he called me, so perhaps he hasn’t arrived yet. Grab yourself a coffee, but stay on this floor. I’ll let you know when he gets here.”

On her way to the kitchenette, Heloise passed the pigeonholes. It was rare for her to receive actual mail these days. Today, however, a big pile of letters was waiting for her.

She carried the letters and a cup of instant coffee to the investigative section, swung both feet up on her desk, and opened the first envelope. It was a heavy thing, nine pages of densely written outrage about the use of child labor in India. The same theme recurred in letters two and three, while the fourth contained a small, yellow Post-it, bearing a single word:

Slut!

“Wow, that’s original,” she said, holding up the Post-it note to her colleague, Mogens Bøttger, who was sitting on the other side of the double desk.

He looked up from his notepad with an unimpressed raising of an eyebrow.

Heloise scrunched up the note along with the envelope and threw the paper ball toward the wastebasket at the far end of the room. It landed on the uneven herringbone parquet floor well clear of its target.

“Swish!” Bøttger said in mock admiration. “The NBA will surely be waiting to scoop you up if Mikkelsen kicks you out.”

“He won’t.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure, if I were you.”

“He won’t fire me,” Heloise stated.

She picked up the next envelope and started opening it.

“He fired the one with the warts,” Bøttger declared in a singsong voice, referring to a fellow reporter who had just been canned for having invented a source. The firing had echoed throughout the building and left chief editor Mikkelsen with a burst blood vessel in one eye. He had been incandescent with rage.

“She damn well deserved it,” Heloise said, “but my case is completely different. I acted in good faith. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t do things differently if I could turn back time—the bright light of hindsight and all that—but Mikkelsen and I, we . . .” Heloise shook her head dismissively. “He’s not gonna fire me.”

She unfolded the next letter and started reading. Bøttger went on talking, but the sound of his voice faded away as a cold, uncomfortable tingling spread inside her.

The letter was short.

It contained only a few sentences written in a neat hand, but the words made her mouth go dry and a cold, bubbly sensation fill her chest.

Bøttger’s voice cut through just as Heloise realized she had stopped breathing. “But you really shouldn’t let anyone tell you—”

“Mogens,” she interrupted him. “Didn’t you cover a story a few years ago about a lawyer who was murdered?”

“Huh?” He looked blankly at her across the desks and straightened up slowly in his chair when he saw her expression. “Who are we talking about?”

“That lawyer who was murdered. Was it in Kokkedal or Hørsholm or somewhere up north? What was his name?”

“His name was Mossing. And he lived in Taarbæk. What about him?”

“Did you cover that story?”

In the investigative section, Mogens Bøttger specialized in crime and social affairs, while Heloise was responsible for business and consumer issues and only rarely dealt with violent crimes.

“No, I was still on the news desk back then. It must have been Ulrich. Why are you asking?”

“What was her name? The woman they think did it?”

“Anna Kiel. And it’s not something they just think. They know. She was caught leaving the scene on a security camera in Mossing’s driveway. And when I say caught, I mean she stood staring directly into the lens for several minutes before leaving the crime scene without trying to remove or damage the camera. Covered in blood from head to toe, frozen like a statue. She just stood there gazing at the camera without moving a muscle. A total psycho.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. She was never found. Why?”

Heloise went over to Bøttger and placed the letter in front of him. She leaned over him while they both read it.

Dear Heloise.

Have you ever seen someone bleed to death?

It’s a unique experience. Or at least it was for me, but then again, I had been looking forward to it for a long time.

I know they say I have committed a crime. That I must be found, tamed and punished.

I haven’t. I won’t be.

I can’t be. I already have been.

. . . And I’m not done yet.

I wish I could tell you more, but I have promised not to.

While I am denied your presence, Heloise, give me at least through your words some sweet semblance of yourself.

Anna Kiel

Bøttger looked up at her, stunned. “Where the hell did you get this?”

“It was in the mail.”

“Do you know her?”

“No. I remember bits and pieces of the story, but apart from that, nothing. Never met her.”

“Christ . . .” He scratched his head so hard his big, dark-brown curls waved from side to side. “Do you think it’s legit?”

Heloise shrugged.

“It might be a hoax,” Bøttger said. “I get the craziest emails from readers all the time. There are weirdos everywhere, Heloise; you know that. This letter could easily have come from one of them. Now that you’re in the public eye with the whole Skriver scandal, your in-box automatically turns into Freak Central.”

Heloise went back to her desk and examined the envelope in which the letter had arrived. It was medium sized and pale blue, and it was postmarked in Cannes eleven days earlier, a week before the whole Skriver thing had exploded. So, whoever sent it, they hadn’t acted in response to the media circus.

“It makes no sense,” she said, looking across to Bøttger. “Why write to me rather than to Ulrich if he was the one who covered the story? Do you know where he’s working now?”

“I don’t think he is. Working, I mean.” Bøttger picked up his cell phone and started swiping.

“What do you mean?”

“He was doing these sleazy tabloid stories for Ekspressen for a while, but I think he has been battling depression or something, and he hasn’t been back to work for a while. He’s covered so many violent crimes over the years, and maybe it all just caught up with him. I think that I have his . . . yeah, I have his private number here. You want it?”

“Yes, please.”

Heloise reread the letter. Then she turned on her computer and Googled Anna Kiel. Two hundred and thirty-eight search results appeared on her screen. She clicked on the first one—an article from her own newspaper, which was indeed written by Ulrich Andersson and dated April 24, 2016.

Murder Suspect Named

The identity of the woman who is wanted in connection with a murder in the small town of Taarbæk has now been established, according to a Copenhagen police press release to Ritzau today.

The suspect is 31-year-old Anna Kiel, a Danish native who is considered armed and dangerous. She is wanted in connection with the fatal stabbing of lawyer Christoffer Mossing, 37, on the night of Sunday 21 April.

The victim was attacked in his home. Police believe that no one else was present at the time of the murder, and no other residents are registered at the address.

“There’s nothing to suggest that the victim and the suspect knew each other, but we do know that the woman in question has a history of mental illness. We therefore ask anyone who might come into contact with her to keep their distance and to contact the police,” says Detective Sergeant Erik Schäfer, who is heading the investigation.

Anna Kiel is of Scandinavian appearance, 5 foot 7 tall, and of medium build, and at the time of the incident she had long, medium-blonde hair. Anyone with information about her whereabouts or who can assist the police with their inquiries in any other way, please contact Copenhagen Police at telephone number 114.

UA, Demokratisk Dagblad

“Kaldan . . .”

Heloise looked up from her computer.

Karen Aagaard was standing at the end of the corridor, gesturing for Heloise to join her. “You’re on.”

CHAPTER

4

DETECTIVE SERGEANT ERIK Schäfer pushed open the door to the interview room with a filthy Ecco shoe the size of a brick. A plump, old woman was sitting with her handbag on her lap at the large laminate table. She nodded respectfully as he entered the room.

“Hello,” she said. “Are you Erik Schäfer?”

“I am.” He stuck out a callused hand to the woman, who shook it politely. “But I didn’t catch your name, Ms. . . . ?”

“Do I have to tell you?”

Schäfer shrugged. “It might make things easier if I know who you are and what you’re doing here.”

“It’s my husband, you see,” she said. “He doesn’t want us to get involved. He’s a very private person, and he doesn’t want us getting mixed up in anything nasty. I haven’t told him that I’m here, and I don’t want him to know.”

“All right. Then let me start by asking what brought you here.” Schäfer took a seat opposite her.

“It’s that lawyer.”

“A lawyer?”

“Yes, that nice man who was murdered. Just north of Copenhagen.”

“Christoffer Mossing?”

“Yes, that’s the one. That was your case, wasn’t it?”

“Still is,” Schäfer said. “It’s been a few years, but the case is still open.”

“It was that spring my sister and brother-in-law visited us,” the woman began. “I remember we had been to Tisvildeleje Beach, and on the way back, the men wanted to buy pipe tobacco from that little shop next to the tourist office. We waited outside, my sister and I. The tabloids outside the shop were plastered with gory details of the murder. It must have been in the days immediately after.” Her gaze grew distant, and she appeared to have lost her train of thought.

“Yes, I’m afraid that his death was rather macabre, poor old Mossing,” Schäfer conceded. “But I’m failing to see where you’re going with this. Are you here to tell me something about him?”

“I remember the girl,” she said. “The one everyone said had done it. There was a big picture of her on the cover of one of the newspapers. It was used over and over in the weeks that followed, also on the TV news. It was a kind of holiday picture where she was standing in front of a scenic landscape. The Grand Canyon, I think it might have been. Do you remember it?”

Schäfer nodded.

The picture was in his case file one floor below where they were sitting, along with other pictures from the crime scene: one of Mossing’s waxy head, which after the attack had been barely attached to his body; photographs of the murder weapon; photos of all the blood.

An unbelievable amount of blood . . .

“I remember thinking that she looked very sad,” the woman continued. “She was standing in the sun, smiling at the photographer, but there was something about her eyes. It was as if they were . . . extinguished. Perhaps it was all in my mind, but she certainly made a lasting impression on me.” She picked nervously at the handle of her handbag.

Schäfer cleared his throat and was about to ask her to get to the point when she looked up again.

“I think I’ve seen her.” She clasped her hand over her mouth as if her own words had shocked her.

Schäfer said nothing for several seconds as he watched her.

“You think you’ve seen her?” He could feel his heart beginning to race. “What do you mean?”

“I saw her,” she replied, with greater conviction in her voice. “She looked different. Her hair was much shorter. Darker. But it was the same face, the same eyes. It was her. I’m sure of it.”

“And where did you see her?” Schäfer took out his pad and pen from his inside pocket and started taking notes.

“We always spend August and September in our holiday cottage—”

“By Tisvildeleje Beach?”

“No, in Provence, France. We have a farmhouse just outside Saint-Rémy, which we bought when Vilhelm retired.” The woman jumped in her seat when she realized she had given away her husband’s name.

She looked at Schäfer with startled eyes.

“I didn’t hear that,” he assured her with a wink and asked her to continue.

“Well, so my husband and I have this house in the South of France. We’ve been going there for twelve, maybe thirteen years now. For the first few years we only explored the area close to where we lived. It takes a while to get to know a new town, although it’s really quite small. But in the last few summers we have made trips to various other towns in neighboring departments. To explore.”

“And you think you saw her on one of those trips?”

“Vilh . . . my husband didn’t see her, but I did. We had gone to a small village an hour’s drive north of Saint-Rémy and we were people-watching in an outdoor café when I spotted this woman. I think I noticed her because she was standing apart from everyone else, and she looked angry. Or maybe angry isn’t the right word, but certainly not happy. And as I sat there watching her, it occurred to me. It was her. The woman you’ve been looking for.”

“Did you speak to her?”

“No, she walked on immediately afterwards, and I’m afraid I didn’t see her again.”

Schäfer’s initial hopes were shattered. An old lady catching a glimpse of a someone who sort of looked like Anna Kiel in a village in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly what he would call a solid lead.

“It all happened so fast,” she said, as though she could read his mind. “So, I understand why you might find it hard to believe. But I think this might help.”

She opened the clasp of her small, bulging handbag, fished something out of it, and handed it to him.

Schäfer got up from his chair to take it as a warm, tingling feeling spread across his upper body.

In his hand, he held a photograph. Red digits in the bottom corner revealed it had been taken a week and a half earlier. The picture showed a group of children and a tall, brusque-looking man gathered around a small table. They were looking at something and Schäfer couldn’t see what it was, but everyone’s eyes were on a cardboard box at the center of the table. Everyone with the exception of one person. A woman who was standing a short distance behind the gathering.

She was looking straight at the camera, and Schäfer instantly knew.

It was her.

It was Anna Kiel.

CHAPTER

5

READERS’ EDITOR CARL-JOHAN “The Shovel” Scowl was sitting at the big, moss-green conference table, flicking through a fat case file, when Heloise entered the room.

At the end of the table, Mikkelsen, the editor in chief, was picking restlessly at his reddish-brown beard. He got up briefly to greet her and waved her eagerly toward the table.

“Come on in,” he said. “Let’s get this show on the road so that we can all move on with our lives, dear friends. After all, we have a paper to publish, and I think we’ve spent quite enough time going over this sorry tale.”

Mikkelsen’s tone was mild, bordering on cheerful, and Karen Aagaard, who was standing next to Heloise, looked at him rather taken aback. Then she turned her attention to The Shovel, who didn’t seem to have registered the peculiar jolliness coming from the end of the table.

“Yes, do sit down, Heloise.” He mispronounced her name, and she suspected him of doing it on purpose.

“The H is silent,” she said. “It’s pronounced É-louise.”

The Shovel looked up. “Whatever. I’m glad that you were able to come at such short notice.”

“Not a problem. Though I have to admit, I’m surprised that we’re back here again.” Heloise looked around the room. “We’ve gone over the story several times now, and I’ve nothing new to add.”

“And you’re sure about that? You haven’t overlooked some detail? Information that could influence my decision?” The Shovel’s voice was surprisingly dark and guttural, ill suiting his slight, almost girly appearance.

“I am. I’ve already told you everything relevant to the case.”

“Right. Then let me briefly summarize events as you’ve described them, so we can be absolutely sure I’ve understood you correctly before I finish writing my report.”

Heloise crossed her legs and waited.

The Shovel turned a couple of pages in his file and cleared his throat. “According to your statement, you were made aware of Jan Skriver’s investment in Cotton Corp, one of the biggest textile factories in Bangalore in India, in June of this year.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“In an article on August second, you write that at the same time Skriver made that investment, he ended his agreement with Glæsel Textiles in Vejle, thus moving the majority of his clothing production out of Denmark. His decision resulted in the loss of eight hundred and fifty Danish jobs and was politically, let’s say, an ‘unpopular’ one.”

“That’s one way of putting it. It was highly unpopular with the government, and it was an unmitigated disaster for the local town.”

“On August third, you were contacted by an—and I quote—‘anonymous source’ who asked you to investigate the move, more specifically Cotton Corp’s use of child labor and the factory’s use of a hormone-interfering substance called nonylphenol ethoxylate, better known as NPE. Have I understood that correctly?”

“Yes.”

“And it is the case that the EU has banned the import of clothing produced using NPE?” The Shovel looked up for the first time.

“Yes.”

“Who was your source?”

“I don’t know. I just got a telephone call. There was a voice on the other end—a man. He mentioned several things, which he encouraged me to investigate more closely, but he didn’t give me his name.”

“But you have some idea of his identity?”

“An idea, yes. But no proof. As you yourself pointed out, politically there was much dismay at Skriver’s decision to move production out of Denmark, so my hunch is that a politician tipped me off. But your guess is as good as mine.”

“Hmm . . .” The Shovel held Heloise’s gaze for several seconds before he continued. “While undertaking your research, you came into possession of what appeared to be internal, confidential documents from Skriver’s organization, including an extract from his contract with Cotton Corp. Documents that confirmed the allegation that the factory did indeed use child labor and illegal chemical substances.”

“Correct.”

“Documents on which you chose to base your recent article.”

“Yes.”

“Who gave you those documents?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. My source wishes to be anonymous, and I have to respect that.”

“But you know the identity of your source?”

“Yes.”

“And to the best of your knowledge, the information was genuine?”

Heloise felt her mouth go dry.

“At the time in question, I had no reason to think otherwise. I’ve used this source on many other occasions over a number of years, and the information has always proved reliable. The documents seemed real, and I trusted them.”

“And that turned out to be a rather reckless decision,” The Shovel observed. “Did you practice due diligence?”

“With the benefit of hindsight, no.”

“And if you ever find yourself in a similar situation, would you then base a story on such one-sided, amateurish research, or would you back up your conclusions with facts?” He held his palms up to illustrate the two options he was presenting her with.

Heloise wanted to reach across the table and strangle him with his slim, curry-colored tie. Instead, she licked her lips calmly.

“Obviously, I’ll strive to practice due diligence in the future. No one wants a repeat of this meeting any less than I do.” She flashed what was supposed to be a smile across the table.

“Right. Well, that’s that, then!” The editor in chief signaled from the end of the table with a contented clap of his hands that he had heard what he needed to hear.

In contrast to Karen Aagaard, Heloise wasn’t surprised at Mikkelsen’s uncharacteristic leniency. A few months earlier, after a long day at work, she had been strolling along the harbor front, wanting to cross Palace Square and pass the Marble Church on her way home. It had been one of the first light, warm evenings of the summer, and she had been halfway through the Amalie Garden when she noticed them.

In the darkest corner of the garden, half-hidden behind a big cherry tree, the editor in chief had been sitting on a bench in a passionate embrace with a dark-haired woman who was young and quite pretty—and definitely not his wife.

The sound of Heloise’s footsteps had made him look up and their eyes had met briefly, before Heloise looked away and left the garden. But she knew what she had seen, and he knew that she knew.

If her job was in jeopardy, Mikkelsen would tip the scales in her favor.

“Yes, I don’t have any further questions either,” The Shovel said, slamming his file shut. “Oh, wait, by the way. I do have one more thing. The source who gave you the documents—that wouldn’t happen to have been Martin Duvall, head of communications at the Ministry of Commerce, would it?”

Heloise sat very still in her chair.

A hint of a smile began to form at the corner of The Shovel’s mouth.

“Like I said, I can’t reveal my source,” Heloise said. “I’m sure that you, as the upholder of good press ethics, can understand that better than anyone.”

“In that case, let me ask you this.” He took off his reading glasses, folded the temples carefully, and placed the spectacles on the table in front of him. “What is your personal relationship with Mr. Duvall?”

Heloise opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She turned her head and looked at Mikkelsen, and before she’d had time to answer, he stood up. His eyes were suddenly black with anger, and a blood vessel bulged on his forehead.

“Thank you, Scowl, that’s quite enough!” He practically spat out the words. “Miss Kaldan’s personal life has nothing to do with this.”

* * *

Karen Aagaard closed the door to her office and turned to Heloise.

“What. On earth. Was that?”

“Are you referring to that odd staccato way you’re speaking?” Heloise produced a packet of chewing gum from her pocket. “I don’t know, but perhaps you should get it checked out. It sounds serious.”

Aagaard flopped down in the leather armchair in the corner. She threw up her hands in resignation. “Oh, you think this is funny, do you?” Her tone was astounded rather than angry.

“Not in the least,” Heloise said, taking a seat opposite her editor. “But what do you want me to say? I screwed up, I’ve admitted it, and it won’t happen again. So now you have to decide whether to give me a new assignment or to send me home.”

She popped two pieces of chewing gum into her mouth and held out the packet to Aagaard, who took it tentatively.

“Hmm. It just feels like there’s something going on between you and Mikkelsen that I should know about?”

“There isn’t.”

“Is there something going on between you and Mikkelsen that I shouldn’t know about?”

“. . . No.”

“Kaldan!”

“Nothing is going on!” Heloise held up her hands to shut her up.

“Okay. I’ll pretend to believe that.” Karen Aagaard drummed her fingers on the coffee table in front of her while she looked pensively at Heloise, trying to decide what to do with her.

Heloise beamed a smile at her, which Aagaard waved away in halfhearted irritation.

“Stop it! I know exactly what you’re doing,” she said. “Okay, well, do you have something you can get started on right away, or do we have to summon the troops for an editorial meeting?”

Heloise instinctively moved her hand to the inside pocket of her leather jacket where she had put the letter. “It just so happens that I’ve received something I want to look into.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure yet. I need to investigate it further before I can tell you whether or not there’s a story there.”

“Right, then get to work. And make sure to keep me posted.”

* * *

When Heloise returned to the investigative section, Mogens Bøttger was nowhere in sight, but several reporters from the other sections had arrived at their desks in the open-plan office, and Heloise could feel them staring at her and sense the questions they were silently asking themselves and each other:

What’s she doing here? I thought she’d been suspended.

She sank deeply into her office chair so that their faces disappeared behind the low partition wall and entered the number of the research department. She let the phone ring until it was picked up by her favorite colleague, the morbidly obese and permanently sweating Morten Munk.

“Kaldan, what the hell? I thought you were grounded.” As always, Munk sounded wheezy and breathless though he never engaged in activities that could cause his pulse to rise.

“Oh, you know me,” Heloise said warmly. “I can’t stay away, and Mikkelsen can’t manage without me. Neither can you, by the way.”

“Touché, ma chérie. To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Are you at your desk?”

“Where else would I be?”

“Do you have time to dig out some information for me?”

“About the Skriver case?” Munk sounded equally excited and skeptical.

“No, I’m done with that. This is something else. Does the name Anna Kiel mean anything to you?”

“Is the Pope Catholic? What about her?”

“I need everything you can find on her. Articles we’ve published in the paper, contributions from other media, background information—the whole shebang.”

Munk was quiet, and Heloise could hear the metallic sound of a pen quickly scribbling down notes on a piece of paper.

“I’ll get to work straightaway,” he said. “I’ll email you when I have something. It shouldn’t be long.”

The first documents arrived in Heloise’s in-box ten minutes later. Rather than reading them right away, she put her laptop in her bag and left the building. She needed fresh air, a chance to work without everyone staring at her, and more importantly, a decent meal. Outside the rain had stopped, so she left her bicycle where it was and walked briskly past the French embassy up to Bistro Royal on Kongens Nytorv—her regular Friday lunch restaurant. Today was Monday, but that didn’t matter. Today, everything seemed out of the ordinary.

The restaurant manager was a hearty, robust man. He greeted her warmly. “Why, it’s my favorite reporter,” he said, getting ready to kiss her cheek.

Heloise had a strong suspicion that he had never read anything she’d written, but she appreciated the welcome and greeted him politely in return.

“I’m certainly a hungry reporter,” she said with a smile.

“Are you alone today, or . . . ?” He held up two menus.