Fatal Crossing Page 5

  In London, Globalt was just a small fish, maybe only a daphnia, in a very large pond. Few people had heard of the magazine and if Nora ever tried to set up an interview at ministerial level, the intern to the assistant to the press secretary would laugh right in her face. That is, if she even made it that far up the system.

  Many people thought she was German. Or Dutch, which wasn’t necessarily an advantage or even made much difference. In British politics, however, there was the national press and then there was everyone else. With the possible exception of American heavyweights such as Time and the New York Times, whose correspondents seemed to have better access than most.

  By now Nora had learned to navigate her way around, find alternative sources and contacts that could help. But it still took her longer than if she could simply pick up her phone and get the information with one call.

  ‘Give me a couple of weeks. Preferably three,’ she begged him.

  The Crayfish growled and complained, but gave in eventually in return for her squeezing a background feature on the crisis in British diplomacy into her schedule.

  ‘And Bo Helmersen wants to know what's happening with the obituary of the prime minister. One day we’ll be needing it, only then you’ll be away reporting from Timbuktu,’ he joshed her.

  ‘All right. I’ll have a look at it,’ Nora promised.

  ‘What's your next move?’ the Crayfish wanted to know.

  Nora pondered it.

  ‘At some stage I think I’ll need to contact Bill Hix, as he calls himself. Confront him with the Polaroids. Find out if he knows anything about what happened to Lulu and Lisbeth. But it could take weeks to get permission to visit him in prison. That is, if he even agrees to see me in the first place,’ she warned him.

  In the background she could hear the clatter of coffee cups, and a girl's voice calling out to her father that she would be late for school if they didn’t leave now.

  ‘Oh well, you’ll work something out,’ he said in his distracted voice. ‘Send me an email when you have more. And listen ... I’ve been thinking, we’d better contact the police about that suitcase. We’re going to play this one by the book,’ he said and rang off before Nora had time to respond.

  She took a quick bath and with a towel wrapped around her long, dark hair, she went hunting for some clean clothes. She wished that she, like most of her male colleagues, had a sweet and kind person living at the same address. Someone who made sure everything at home ran like clockwork. That there was always milk in the fridge, clean and freshly ironed shirts in the wardrobe and that the TV licence was paid on time.

  Nora scowled at her bulging laundry basket before she found an only slightly crumpled floral summer dress behind a pile of sweaters in her wardrobe, and stepped into her beloved Clarks sandals.

  She packed the laptop into her bag, stuffed Murders of the Century into the front pocket, along with her notebook, a few pens and her mobile.

  Then she slammed the door behind her and walked five minutes to the nearest Starbucks. There were days when it was simply too deathly dull to work from home. Days when she felt the need for life around her — people coming and going, the hissing and slurping of coffee machines. Yummy mummies sheltering from the summer rain, schoolkids in uniforms competing to text the fastest, and business people trying to give the impression they were in a busy and successful office while shouting into their mobiles to drown out the smooth jazz from the café's speakers.

  She ordered a grande latte in a paper cup, found a leather armchair, and placed the laptop on the small circular table. Then she opened a new document and titled it: The Girls from the England Ferry.

  X

  First there were the English clues and then there were those from Denmark.

  She found her notes from the TV programme and reread them. She wondered why no one from Vestergården had been willing to be interviewed by DR.

  Nora connected to the café's Wi-Fi and entered the name into a search engine. Vestergården was the name of a nursery school outside of Slagelse, a retirement home in Kerteminde, and a family farm by Henne Strand. Google knew of no children's home by that name.

  Well, that would’ve been too easy.

  She found the homepage of Ringkøbing-Skjern Council, clicked until she found Social Services and wrote down their telephone number.

  A search on www.krak.dk showed there were four people registered in Denmark by the name K. Damtoft. None of them lived in Ringkøbing or even nearby.

  If she were to tell this story properly, she needed a better understanding of the girls. Discover where Lulu and Lisbeth had come from. Right now they were simply abstract stereotypes. What were their dreams? Why had they ended up at Vestergården, a place where damaged and difficult youngsters were sent when all other efforts had failed? When they were what social workers liked to call ‘beyond educational reach’.

  If she were to have any hope of getting her readers to care about the fate of the two girls after all these years, she had to show them who they were.

  She was well aware that even a tenuous link to a British serial killer would sell the story, but merely adding information about the bloodthirsty Brit without proving the link wouldn’t work.

  Her coffee was getting cold. Even so, she took a sip and looked up the homepage of a budget airline. She would have to go back to Denmark once more.

  But first she had to track down a man.

  She called Scotland Yard, having learned from experience to avoid the press office, which served mainly as a kind of Bermuda Triangle where enquiries from journalists disappeared under mysterious circumstances, never to be seen or heard again. Frankly, they might as well record a message telling you that if the information you were looking for wasn’t on their homepage, you should give up now.

  Instead Nora asked to be put through to Detective Inspector James McCormey.

  She heard the receptionist look up the name on her computer.

  ‘He no longer works here. May I ask which investigation this relates to?’

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’ Nora asked her instead.

  A new pause.

  ‘My colleague thinks he might be in Folkestone or somewhere else along the south coast. Unless he's retired. Can someone else help you?’

  Nora mumbled a thank you and rang off.

  Half an hour and seven police stations later she struck gold in Dover.

  ‘He's out on a job. He’ll be back after two o’clock. Can I take a message?’ the officer said.

  Nora dutifully stated her name and telephone number before the inevitable question: ‘May I ask what this is about?’

  ‘A very old case,’ she replied, and hung up.

  When it got to three thirty and he still hadn’t called, she rang back.

  ‘He's just on his way in. Please try again in twenty minutes,’ promised the same male voice which had taken her original message.

  Half an hour later she finally got through to McCormey. He sounded out of breath and irritable.

  ‘Yes. What is it?’ he snapped.

  ‘Good afternoon. My name is Nora Sand. I’m a journalist with the Danish magazine, Globalt, and -’

  He cut her off immediately: ‘I’m not speaking to the press about this case. We have confirmed there are seven fatalities and five casualties have been admitted to hospital. All further communication is to go through our press office. There's already a press release on the internet. Goodbye.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m not calling about —’ Nora had time to say before she realised that he had already hung up.

  She pressed recall. It went straight to voicemail. She rang off without leaving a message, but changed her mind and rang back.

  ‘DI McCormey,’ she said in her best upper-class English to the voicemail. ‘I’m not calling to talk about your current investigation. I’m calling because I believe I have information relating to a case from the 1980s. It concerns William Hickley, also known as Bill Hix.’

  She left her number
and repeated her name.

  If that didn’t make him call back, nothing would. According to Murders of the Century William Hickley had been McCormey's biggest case ever; a case that had ended up defining his career, for better or for worse.

  Nora packed up her laptop and jumped on a bus to Hampstead. She was queuing at the French bakery for a loaf of sourdough bread when her iPhone buzzed in her handbag.

  ‘McCormey here,’ said a weary voice, and carried on more tartly: ‘Let me guess. You’ve drawn a map of where the girls are buried in Underwood. An area where nothing has been found despite twenty years of searching. A remote corner that was simply overlooked by hundreds of volunteers and professionals. Or perhaps you have a confession from a brand-new source proving it wasn’t William Hickley who killed the girls?’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘Well, in any case, please do send me an email about your undoubtedly fascinating revelations. You’ll find a link if you go on to our website at -’

  ‘I think I’ve found his suitcase.’

  There was silence down the other end. McCormey cleared his throat.

  ‘What did you say your name was?’

  Nora introduced herself again.

  ‘OK, Miss Sand. That's a new one. And how did you come into possession of a suitcase belonging to a man who was locked up in the last millennium?’

  Nora briefly explained how and where she had found and bought the suitcase, and how she had later discovered Bill Hix's name on its side.

  ‘With all due respect, Miss Sand. I know what you journalists are like, you love a good story. God help us. But seriously, any mentally disturbed person could have written “Hix” on the side of that suitcase. It was probably never even in William Hickley's possession. We did ransack his home,’ McCormey pointed out.

  ‘No, I understand that,’ Nora said. ‘It's just that the suitcase contained photographs. Pictures of young women.’

  Down the other end McCormey went quiet again. She could hear the rustling of paper in the background.

  ‘I can meet with you tomorrow morning at eleven thirty. Make sure you’re on time. I’ll give you thirty minutes to convince me. Bring the suitcase.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Nora said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  She bought her sourdough, nipped into the greengrocers for watermelon and fresh peas, and then called Pete on impulse.

  ‘Fancy coming over tonight, darling?’

  Pete heaved a melodramatic sigh. ‘How long have we known each other?’

  ‘Eh ... five years, something like that,’ Nora ventured.

  ‘And to your knowledge during that time have I ever — and I repeat, ever — not watched live football matches on the telly when we’re in London?’

  Nora slapped her forehead. Of course. ‘When does it start?’

  ‘Kick-off is at eight o’clock.’

  ‘Then come round for an early supper. I’ll cook risotto. Bring your camera and you won’t have to wash up.’

  ‘And you’ll let me leave in time for the pub? Promise?’

  ‘Scouts honour,’ she assured him.

  ‘Were you ever even a Girl Scout?’

  ‘Call yourself an Australian? You should be into rugby and cricket, not football.’

  ‘See ya later, Sheila,’ he said in his broadest Crocodile Dundee accent and rang off.

  Using the Anglepoise lamp as a spotlight, Nora made Pete take pictures of the suitcase from every imaginable angle. Afterwards she placed the Polaroids on the table, one after the other, so that he could photograph them as well.

  She had a hunch that McCormey would want to keep them when he — like her — became convinced that they had once belonged to a serial killer.

  7

  She reached Platform 30 at Charing Cross Station seconds before a whistle signalled the doors were closing. The Northern Line service had been as irregular as it was most mornings, and the tube train, which was supposed to have gone via Charing Cross, had suddenly changed destination to Bank, so she had to jump out and change at Euston. It had cost her at least ten precious minutes.

  She had still had five minutes before departure when she reached Charing Cross, and there would have been ample time to buy newspapers and a cup of coffee, if it hadn’t been for a tourist in the queue, who didn’t know how to speak coffee.

  ‘So does that mean that a grande is the biggest coffee, or is that the venti? And is it possible to get an Americano with milk?’ the man wanted to know while the line of morning-weary Londoners lengthened behind him.

  Nora tried to stay calm as she waited with The Times and the Guardian tucked under her arm and the correct money in her hand. When her turn finally came, it was two minutes before departure and she had to sprint to the train, balancing the macchiato, newspapers and the bin liner into which she, for want of anything better, had put the suitcase.

  She flopped on to her seat, opened the Guardian and realised immediately why McCormey had sounded exceptionally stressed the day before: ‘New Chinese tragedy in Dover,’ the paper announced over a picture of something that looked like a refrigerated lorry from the Netherlands.

  She quickly scanned the story. It was just as familiar as it was sad. A group of Chinese people had tried to reach the promised land of Great Britain by hiding behind tomatoes in a refrigerated lorry. Something had gone terribly wrong. Either the driver had been unaware of his cargo, or he had forgotten to stop and give his stowaways some fresh air. When heat-seeking equipment revealed their presence on the ferry, it was too late for more than half the group that had dreamt of a better life.

  Seven had died from a lack of oxygen and five, who were suffering from frostbite and shock, had been admitted to hospital for observation. The police had no comments as to how close they were to catching the human traffickers behind the tragedy.

  The Times had relegated the story to page three; however, it carried an incandescent editorial about how France's wishy-washy immigration policy had created a problem that the French were dumping on Great Britain in their typically underhand manner.

  ‘Until we show our so-called friends in Europe that we are not the rubbish bin for the continent, we have to rely on border police, border police and more border police,’ the paper thundered.

  Such views irritated her, and she reminded herself yet again that it was a bad idea to read editorials in the morning. She sipped her coffee and stared out at the soft, green hills rolling past. It looked like yet another warm summer's day. Just like yesterday, when seven people died from cold and a lack of oxygen.

  X

  Dover police were housed in a surprisingly well-maintained, redbrick building in the centre of Dover. Nora turned up at reception, showed her press card and was asked to wait.

  She sat on a hard wooden chair while she looked around the room. A Crimestoppers poster with a freephone number dominated the noticeboard. Next to it was a picture of a broken little girl lying on the tarmac with blood trickling out of her mouth. ‘Don’t drink and drive’ it said in red letters above her. Below was a photocopy of what appeared to be a leaflet from the Home Office. ‘Know your rights’ it said in every known language from Chinese to Russian.

  A uniformed female police officer with red hair entered the room and looked around for Nora.

  ‘Detective Inspector McCormey is ready to see you now,’ she said in a formal tone of voice and led Nora through a corridor, up some stairs and down a passage. At the end she knocked carefully on the closed door.

  ‘Yes?’ they heard.

  They entered. McCormey was sitting behind his desk. Three staff sat in front of him. Two of them clearly police officers plus a third man whom Nora took to be a newly recruited press officer. His hair was too long and his suit a tad too well fitting for him to belong to the forces of law and order.

  ‘Miss Sand. We’re just finishing. Has someone offered you tea?’ McCormey asked.

  The redhead disappeared and returned soon afterwards with two mugs filled to the brim w
ith milky tea.

  The three staff rose to their feet.

  ‘Briefing at twelve noon at the Port Office,’ one of them said, and clicked his pen.

  ‘Twelve noon,’ McCormey repeated and closed the door behind them.

  Nora quickly sized him up and compared him to the man from the Bill Hix case. The years had left their marks. His hair had gone grey and he had gained a little weight, but his gaze was just as intense and he looked like someone who kept in respectable shape and took care of his health.

  As if to confirm Nora's thoughts, he pulled open a drawer and took out a shiny green Granny Smith apple.

  ‘Please excuse me. I always get hungry this time in the morning,’ he said, and sank his teeth into the apple.

  He seemed more approachable in person than he had on the telephone.

  ‘OK, Miss Sand. You’re here about Hickley. You have my full attention ... And twenty-five minutes,’ he said, glancing at his wristwatch.

  Without further ado Nora handed him the bin bag with the suitcase. He placed it on the table.

  ‘One suitcase — as promised.’

  He examined it closely.

  ‘More specifically a suitcase with the name Bill Hix on the side,’ he stated with forced neutrality and shrugged his shoulders. ‘As I said to you yesterday, it could belong to anyone.’

  Nora produced the envelope with the Polaroids from her bag and handed them to McCormey. He opened a drawer in his desk, rummaged around and found a pair of thin, white latex gloves, which he put on before he opened the envelope.

  He looked at Nora. ‘I presume that you’ve touched the pictures,’ he said with a hint of reproach in his voice.

  Nora nodded. ‘I didn’t know they might be evidence. In fact, they fell out of the suitcase, so I had to pick them up,’ she explained.

  ‘Hmm. Before you leave, tell reception you need fingerprinting,’ he said, and took out the pictures.

  Nora had counted them last night. There were twelve in total, and James McCormey arranged them in a calm and measured way as if he were a croupier in a casino dealing cards for blackjack. Three ruler-straight rows of four pictures in each.