Fatal Crossing Page 23

  Perhaps she should track down the fisherman who had found the body that might be Oluf. Try to uncover how a Danish amateur boxer had ended up in a fisherman's net off the English south coast, and find out if the fisherman might have seen something that wasn’t included in the very brief report attached to the picture of the alleged Oluf. Now what was his name again? Thompson? Finding him on Yellow Pages would be no easy task, but if she drove down to Waybridge harbour, someone might know who he was and where he was. After all, hauling a dead man out of the sea along with your catch didn’t happen every day.

  Had Oluf been involved in the disappearance of Lisbeth and Lulu? And why had he himself died? Was it about revenge? And who was taking revenge, and for what?

  Nora explored various scenarios in her mind. She found it hard to imagine a lad, who after all had only been sixteen or seventeen years old back then, as a cold-blooded killer, as someone who could make not only one but two young and relatively strong women disappear into thin air, leaving absolutely no trace at all. From what she had read about serial killers recently, killing was like any other craft. The more you practised, the better you got, and the more daring your techniques.

  It would have taken an older and much more experienced man than a teenage Oluf to carry out the double murder. Then again, if Anni was to be believed, he had managed to rape her that night without it looking as if it had affected the rest of his life very much at all.

  Had Lulu and Lisbeth seen something they shouldn’t? Again, that didn’t make sense either. Because if this was about not being caught for the rape, then why not get rid of Anni as well? Or did he know that she would keep her mouth shut, or that no one would believe her even if she did speak up. However, if there were three witnesses whose stories supported each other, then Oluf was in trouble. He risked going to prison, and given the petty crimes and everything else already hanging over his head, that could be for a considerable period of time.

  The radio was now playing Lady Gaga singing about her ‘Poker Face’ in honour of Jack, for whom Janet from Aylesbury was still holding a torch. Janet just wanted him to know that. Along with thousands of other listeners. Nora cringed on poor Jack's behalf and thought that if he really was listening to Luuuurve Radio right now, he only had himself to blame. And if he wasn’t, then no harm was done. She chuckled to herself and couldn’t help singing along to the catchy chorus. The music cheered her up. Everything would be all right. She had got hold of the right end of the thread, and all she had to do was pull and untangle it until she could roll it into a tidy ball of yarn and write a coherent story. Someone would probably find a mobile in Hix's cell, confiscate it, and that would be the end of that, she tried telling herself.

  The car chewed up the miles, and Nora settled into her own rhythm, winding her way in and out between the other cars. Then without warning, a blast from the past.

  After Kevin had said sorry to Tina for something Nora could only guess at with John Lennon's ‘Jealous Guy’, the next song hit her like a punch to the stomach. The moment she heard the confused radio signals interrupted by the crisp guitar that conjured up melancholy so effortlessly, she was taken back in time.

  ‘Wish You Were Here,’ Pink Floyd sang, and Nora was no longer on the road miles from the next exit.

  She was wearing her best dress, the dark blue one with the pink flowers, to her first sixth form party and she was tipsy from drinking rum and Coke at Trine's house earlier. The dance floor was crowded with teenagers trying to look cool, while U2 set socio-political issues to music.

  A tall gangly guy from her year, whose name might be Jan, caught Nora's attention. He was so obviously trying to pull Trine and used dancing as his means of seduction. Even Nora in her early stages of inebriation could see that the project was doomed to fail. Partly because Jan was so atrocious a dancer that if you took the music out of the equation and simply observed his movements, most people's first response would be to call for medical assistance, and also because the attractive Trine with the big blue eyes and the long blond hair was way out of his league.

  Nora was watching them idly, making bets with herself about when the horrible truth would dawn on the poor lad.

  Jan twisted backwards in a particularly daring move that might have looked more natural had there been a broom handle and a limbo involved. Nora couldn’t help but laugh.

  Suddenly her view was blocked by a tall broad-shouldered guy. At first she tried craning her neck to follow the performance on the dance floor, but he was too big. ‘Oi, I’m trying to watch this.’

  He moved to stand alongside her and followed her gaze. ‘Ah. Jan. He's in my class. He doesn’t stand a chance. It's never gonna happen!’ he shouted to her over the music.

  ‘No. Of course not!’ Nora shouted back. ‘The only question is will it take one or two songs before he realises.’

  The mountain shrugged his broad shoulders and thought about it for five seconds. ‘Next song, I say. What's at stake?’

  ‘A beer?’ Nora suggested.

  ‘Breakfast?’ he outbid her.

  They just had time to shake hands on it, before Pink Floyd poured out of the speakers with ‘Wish You Were Here’, and most couples on the floor came together in a close embrace to the slow song. Halfway through it, Trine appeared in front of Nora.

  ‘Right, listen, darling — I’ve decided to go home with Kristoffer. Are you OK with that?’ she slurred.

  Nora just had time to nod before Trine disappeared with a guitar-playing and supercool boy from the year above, who was the object of desire for most of the girls in their year. Jan was still on the dance floor with his eyes closed, swaying to the music. He hadn’t even noticed Trine taking off.

  The mountain turned around with raised eyebrows. ‘Looks like breakfast is on you,’ he commented dryly, and added after a small pause: ‘Andreas.’

  ‘Nora,’ she said.

  ‘Let's get out of here,’ he said, taking her arm.

  When they left the darkened sports hall, dawn was just breaking. She checked him out while they unlocked the bikes.

  He was actually quite good-looking. Brown eyes, hair the colour of corn. Good lips and those broad shoulders. Oh, God, don’t let him be one of those self-obsessed morons who love posing in front of the mirror while they lift weights, she prayed.

  They cycled to a bakery known for selling bread rolls round the back to people on their way home after a night out, and knocked on the door. One of the bakery assistants opened it and, in return for cash, handed them a couple of buttered bread rolls and two bottles of Cocio chocolate milk. They would have to imagine the coffee.

  ‘So where will we consume this feast?’ asked Nora, who was starting to sober up.

  ‘Follow me,’ he said.

  They cycled through the town and down to the beach. As far as Nora was concerned, this was perfect. There was nothing more she wanted right now than to gaze at the sea, while she ate her breakfast as the sun rose for yet another warm August day.

  They found a hollow in the dunes with a great view and made themselves comfortable with their bread rolls. Andreas talked about other sunrises, and before Nora knew it, they were discussing Hemingway, triathlons, Pink Floyd and the Trans-Siberian railway. And how Nora had been scared of purple monsters when she was little, whether Bob Dylan was overrated, and Andreas's father, who had been a police officer before he was killed in a motorbike accident.

  A few hours later, their conversation started to trail off. It was time to go home, only Andreas wasn’t ready for it.

  ‘Come on — time for a morning swim,’ he said in a voice that would accept no contradiction.

  It was still a few hours after sunrise and there was no one else on the beach. They had jumped into the waves and thus established a tradition that would last until the end of their school days. Exams, parties, break-ups and other feeble excuses didn’t count. The morning swim was sacred.

  So why hadn’t they taken the next step that morning? Had it been on the ver
ge of happening, had there been a moment when he looked into her eyes a little too long. Had she herself wanted to reach for him?

  She tried to recall exactly how she had felt that morning. Remembered the sensation of seawater against her body, the sand between her toes. The salt on her skin. Standing alone on a deserted beach with a man she didn’t yet know, but who had beautiful eyes.

  When they got out of the water, Nora started shivering and she quickly put on her blue dress over her soaked underwear.

  ‘I need to get home, have a hot shower and put on some dry clothes or I’ll catch cold,’ she had said. And he had let her leave.

  When she pushed her bike over the first row of dunes and glanced back, he was still watching her. But by then it was already too late.

  Nora didn’t surface from her reverie until a big burgundy sign announced that she was one mile from a service station with a Costa Coffee. She moved to the inside lane, pulled into the service station, parked, and got out of the car. She needed a break, and she needed lunch.

  X

  She brought her laptop inside and tried to get Wi-Fi while she munched her way through a stale club sandwich washed down with a small bottle of sparkling mineral water that alone set her back two pounds.

  While she ate, she looked up the rest of the route to Waybridge. And felt an icy shiver down her spine.

  She already had a vague idea that Waybridge was in the same part of the UK as Brine, but the roadmap showed her it was less than five kilometres from the small coastal town where she had bought the suitcase.

  She then logged on to www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and searched for articles about the discovery of a man who might be Oluf. There was frustratingly little and nothing she didn’t already know.

  There was a brief mention in some local papers, and the Waybridge Courier had taken the trouble to interview the fisherman, who stated that he was in ‘deep shock’ at what the journalist called ‘his macabre catch’. Next to the article, which was just as lurid as it was sparse on detail, was a black-and-white photograph of a sombre man wearing overalls and a black beanie in front of a fishing boat. The caption announced it was Arthur Thompson and his trawler Norma.

  Norma. She wrote down the name on her notepad. At least it was a start. Then she searched for Arthur Thompson in Waybridge. There were fourteen Thompsons within the postcode, but no one with the initial A. Then again, that would have been too easy.

  She was full and threw the last third of the revolting sandwich in the bin. She briefly considered stocking up on Liquorice Allsorts, but got a Coke from the kiosk instead.

  One and a half hours later she turned off towards Waybridge and pulled into a layby to stretch her legs and assess her situation. She had a view of endlessly rolling hills dotted with big gnarled oak trees. It was one of the things she loved about the English countryside: the way proud old trees weren’t sacrificed just to make it easier for the tractor to plough.

  Whenever she passed one of those fairy tale trees, she was always tempted to stop, walk up to it and lie on her back with her head close to the trunk so she could look up at the foliage, catch a glimpse of blue sky and wonder about nothing in particular.

  But not today. She entered the address of the harbour office on the satnav without getting her hopes up. The chances of finding fresh information at the harbour were slim, but it was something to do while waiting for the lunch meeting with Summers and her retired father tomorrow.

  28

  She parked a short distance from the harbour behind a fish and chip shop, which advertised fresh fish with a picture of a cheery captain wearing a stripy jumper and a pipe dangling from the corner of his mouth, clearly from a time before the smoking ban reached the UK. Nora glanced through the window. The place looked nice and clean, and she decided on the spot that she would have dinner there when the time came. Surely the occasional fish and chips couldn’t do any harm, especially after that appalling lunch.

  It took her only minutes to walk down to the harbour basin, but even from this short distance, Nora could tell that her visit was likely to be in vain. Only two trawlers were moored, and neither of them was called Norma. Instead, the harbour area was busy with tourists eating ice cream, buying postcards and fighting off the seagulls so they could eat their chips in peace. An elderly couple were sitting on a bench, and while Nora watched them the man put his arm around his wife's shoulder and kissed her cheek with such affection that Nora's tummy ached as though she had swallowed ice cream too quickly.

  She made her way to one of the two trawlers. At that very moment her mobile rang. She fumbled for it in her pocket without checking the display before she answered it.

  ‘Sand speaking.’

  ‘It's me.’ Andreas's voice sounded strange. As if he had a cold. Or had been crying.

  ‘OK?’ she said with forced neutrality.

  ‘Where are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Somewhere along the coast, not far from Brine. A small town called Waybridge.’

  ‘Why did you go on your own? There might be a killer at large, and you running around playing Miss Marple without backup is quite simply too dangerous,’ he said, sounding agitated.

  ‘But, Andreas,’ she protested piously. ‘You were so very welcome to join me this weekend, but now what was it again? Something about you going home to Denmark to your girlfriend?’

  ‘She wants to get married,’ he interrupted her.

  Nora thought she must have misheard. ‘What?’

  ‘She wants to get married,’ he repeated. His voice was strangely weak and flat.

  The pause between them was deep and black like the Mariana Trench.

  She could hear him inhale, as if he was about to say something. Something she very much didn’t want to hear. ‘But I —’

  ‘Congratulations to you both. How lovely,’ she cut him off in a voice she didn’t recognise as her own.

  ‘Nora, Goddammit.’

  ‘Well, that's great news. But I have to run,’ she managed to say, and pressed him away from the screen.

  She wanted nothing more than to hurl her mobile straight into the sea, but instead she dumped it in her pocket a fraction of a second before she buckled up and sacrificed the dismal club sandwich to the sea gods.

  A cheeky red-haired teenager shouted out after her, ‘Someone can’t hold their drink!’ but was met with a look so venomous that he shut up immediately.

  She found a McDonald's two streets from the harbour-front and went to the loo to inspect the damage. Her mascara was streaked down her cheeks, her skin was pale, and her eyes looked bloodshot. Shit. She had only gone and done a Pete: met someone who could be the One, only to stand by while they married someone else. When that person was wrong for them.

  At the very moment Andreas was permanently out of her reach, she knew that he was the only man for her.

  She turned on the cold tap until icy water cascaded out, and stuck her head under the spray. That helped. She tried gathering her thoughts about Andreas into small parcels and putting them away carefully in the bottom drawer of her brain, in a place she didn’t look very often. She dabbed her face with lavatory paper and tried drying her hair as best she could under one of the hand dryers.

  In the front pocket of her bag she found a crumbled packet of chewing gum with a few pieces remaining. She popped them into her mouth, and a deep breath later she was back out in the street, heading for the harbour and the two fishing boats.

  On the deck of one a middle-aged man was busy examining a bright orange net for holes. He raised his head when he sensed Nora looking at him. ‘No pictures. I’m not a bloody tourist attraction,’ he sneered.

  Nora shook her head. ‘No, no. I’m looking for a trawler called Norma. Thompson.’

  He gave her a suspicious stare. ‘Are you from the Marine Management Organisation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, you don’t look it,’ he conceded.

  Nora waited. Stood her ground. He pretended not to notice her and we
nt back to his nets. Some minutes passed. She stuffed her hands into her pockets. Her mobile vibrated like crazy. She ignored it.

  At length he gave in reluctantly. ‘Most trawlers come in before the tide changes. If you’re down here about five, Norma might be coming in,’ he said, spitting a gob of saliva into the water.

  ‘Thank you,’ Nora said.

  He said nothing, but got started on another pile of nets.

  She found a café with a view of the bay, took a seat on the first floor and ordered a pot of Earl Grey tea. Initially after her move to the UK, she had laughed at the British belief that every problem could be sorted with a nice cup of tea, but now she was a convert. Hot tea with milk and sugar could soothe even the greatest calamity. Of course, you couldn’t magic away all the problems in the world by chucking some dried leaves into hot water and pouring it into floral china mugs. But it made them a little easier to bear.

  Her mobile kept bouncing insistently like a small, furious man in a Czech cartoon. She took it out of her pocket against her better judgement. It was Andreas, and it was the seventh time he had called since she had hung up on him.

  She put the phone on silent.

  The tea was hot and she added lots of sugar before filling the cup to the brim with milk. It spread a temporary calm inside her. A kind of truce with the world that made it possible for her to focus on being in Waybridge and watch the harbour and the fishing boats.

  She gave up thirty seconds later and called Trine. She would know what to do. More than anything, what Nora wanted to do right now was find the nearest hotel and curl up in a foetal position on the bed, but it wasn’t terribly convenient when she was on an assignment. If there was an alternative, Trine would know it. Her call was answered after four rings, when she was starting to have second thoughts and had almost hung up.