She felt tense and reticent, and a bit distracted. Svend and she had decided long ago not to have children, even though everyone around them was reproducing like there was no tomorrow. They referred to their three border collies as their boys and didn’t feel like they were missing out on anything. But she still knew there was no greater pain in life than the loss of a child, and here she was on her way to inflict on somebody precisely that pain.
The staff had, at her request, asked Mr. and Mrs. Stender to remain in their room without explaining any further. Anette and Jeppe headed up to the second floor, found room 202, and knocked. A second later, a petite, elegant woman with short gray hair opened the door. She nodded somberly to them. The worried wrinkle in her forehead looked like a Hindu caste mark over her mother-of-pearl eyeglasses. She pulled back into the hotel room so Jeppe and Anette could enter.
Christian Stender sat in an upholstered silk armchair holding his head in his hands. He had unbuttoned the top buttons of his shirt so a tuft of graying chest hair and the top of a considerable potbelly were just visible. A couple of well-worn leather shoes in need of polishing sat next to his chair, signaling an owner who valued comfort over style. He raised his head and, on seeing his guests, looked down again. His face was covered in beads of sweat, his eyes small and red-rimmed. This man was either petrified or suffering from serious gastritis.
“Christian started feeling unwell when the receptionist called to say the police wanted to talk to us,” Mrs. Stender explained, twisting her hands in a caricatured gesture of concern. “He’s convinced something has happened to Julie. My… uh, stepdaughter. She hasn’t been answering her phone. I’ve tried to reassure him, but he won’t listen. This is about the burglary at the company, right? Not about Julie?”
Anette and Jeppe exchanged a look, neither of them particularly eager to confirm the worst. She nodded to him, thankful for their division of labor, then slid to the wall from where she could observe both parents’ faces.
“Unfortunately,” Jeppe said, “we’re not here to talk about a burglary.” He cleared his throat, his voice unexpectedly nervous. “I’m sorry. We have bad news. We’ve come about Julie.”
Christian Stender looked up from his armchair with pupils as small as a heroin addict’s. Everything about him froze in anticipation. Anette tried to analyze his expression for hidden signs but saw only the terror of a parent confronted with his worst fear.
Jeppe continued hesitantly. “I’m very sorry to have to inform you that—”
He didn’t get any further before Christian Stender started bellowing like a madman. He collapsed, fell out of the silk chair, and ended up half kneeling as he screamed. His face was contorted; his hair lay like a thin veil over his shiny scalp. He looked like an opera singer performing his big scene of torment and despair.
Anette noted these factors, just as calmly as if she were watching amateur theater. Her empathy meter didn’t budge. What the heck was wrong with her? Or with him?
“We found the deceased body of a young woman in Julie and Caroline’s apartment,” Jeppe continued hesitantly between the father’s cries. “I am sorry to inform you that it is Julie. We still need to complete… some investigations before the identification is official, but we do not feel there is any doubt.”
He sought Anette’s eyes, and they nodded to each other. No need to mention the autopsy or the dental check yet.
“It pains me terribly—” Jeppe started but got stuck.
Christian Stender had curled up on the floor. His wife stood behind a chair, staring at him as she picked at the edge of the upholstery.
“Could we have a moment alone?” Ulla Stender asked slowly but with unexpected authority. “I realize we’ll probably need to come to the police station or whatever, but would you please give us a moment to compose ourselves? Alone?”
“We’ll wait in the lobby,” Anette said as Jeppe went for the door. “Just take your time.”
They walked into the hall together, eager to get out of the stuffy room and away from its intense emotion. None of their condolences seemed adequate, so they didn’t say anything more. Anette closed the door behind them. The last thing she saw before the door clicked shut was the woman approaching her husband, her arms outstretched.
CHAPTER 5
“Would you like me to press a button for you? Which floor?”
The bald woman with the IV pole flashed a friendly smile, her finger hovering in the air in front of the elevator’s many buttons.
“Fourteen,” Esther said, returning the smile. “Thank you so much.”
The doors slid shut. She racked her brains for something to say—maybe just a comment about the weather—but then she didn’t know when the woman had last been outside. So she kept quiet, spitting discreetly onto her fingertips instead, trying to rub off the last of the fingerprint ink with a rolled-up tissue from her pocket. The crime scene technician had explained how Denmark was one of the few countries in the world that still used ink instead of the modern scanning system the rest of the planet had long since adopted. Even countries like the Central African Republic were ahead of Denmark, he explained as he rolled her fingers over inkpad and paper. Odd guy. She had scrubbed her hands with a nail brush right after, but the ink remained.
At first glance the cardiac intensive care ward at Denmark’s national hospital didn’t look like the most uplifting place, even if the omnipresent suffering had been somewhat camouflaged with a motley assortment of posters across the walls. People always use the happiest colors in places where all hope is lost. There was even an ad hanging next to the elevator for a concert by the former chief of police, promising eight pieces from the Danish folk songbook with piano accompaniment.
Are patients’ moods really lifted by sentimental entertainment no healthy person would tolerate for five minutes? Esther thought as she entered Ward 3-14-2.
She found the right patient room and paused at its open door. The first of the two beds inside was empty, but Gregers Hermansen lay in the other, his face turned to the window.
“Hi, Gregers,” Esther said after a hesitant knock.
Without turning around, his shoulders began to shake from sobbing. Like a child who has been holding on to the pain until his mother finally arrives to tend to his grazed elbow and the tears have an audience. Esther remained in the doorway, fighting the impulse to run from the somber, sad hospital room. Collected herself and walked to his side.
“It’s just me,” she said.
Gregers let his tears flow freely. She took his hand and stood there quietly until he calmed down.
Poor old friend, she thought, overcome with sympathy for this man she had known for twenty years and yet hardly knew at all. They had never really become friends, although they had lived under the same roof for so long. At that moment it seemed like such a waste.
Esther pulled up a chair, unbuttoned her jacket, and then took hold of Gregers’s hand again. She wanted to say something comforting, but everything sounded wrong. So instead she just sat and listened to the crying, feeling inadequate and out of sorts. She needed a vacation and a glass of red wine. Needed to calm her mind. To not be thinking a thousand thoughts, which all led to shortcuts. To not remember when—seemingly a thousand years ago—she had been the one lying sobbing in a hospital bed. She hadn’t had anyone to hold her hand then.