Fatal Crossing Read online

  As teenagers, they had gone swimming nearly every morning. In the sea during the summer, in the swimming pool in the winter. But after Andreas's embarrassing declaration of love, they had avoided each other for more than a decade. Nora shrugged. It was a long time ago, it no longer mattered.

  She gazed across the lake and noticed the many au pairs, who had congregated with buggies in the sunshine, along with tourists and office workers on their breaks.

  ‘Is this about the girls from the England ferry?’ he asked after a long pause.

  Nora nodded.

  ‘OK. I was supposed to go to Liverpool this weekend with a friend to watch a football match, but he called off. So, I’m game,’ he said.

  Nora's thoughts ran wild, and in her mind's eye she suddenly saw Andreas sitting on the edge of a four-poster bed in a darkened room with closed curtains in a hotel in Brine. She imagined his face as she reached out her hands to unbutton his white shirt. One button at a time.

  As if he could read her thoughts, he turned his head and looked into her eyes for longer than was polite.

  Then guitar riff from ‘Smoke on the Water’ ripped the air apart. The sound was coming from Andreas's jacket pocket and he fumbled awkwardly as he pulled out his mobile.

  ‘Yes?’ he said in a low voice.

  Nora tried to control herself. What was she thinking? Andreas was Andreas, and there was absolutely no reason to change a formula that had worked for her for years.

  After a few ‘hmms’ and a single ‘right’ Andreas ended his conversation with ‘Listen, now is not a good time. I’ll call you tonight.’

  Afterwards he refused to look her in the eye. Nora sipped her juice and feigned indifference as she studied a group of Japanese tourists whose meeting point, despite the sunshine, was a large, yellow brolly.

  ‘That was Birgitte. My girlfriend. She also works for the police,’ Andreas said after a lengthy pause.

  Nora put on her best Botox smile. One of those where the intention is definitely there, but the muscles are frozen.

  ‘Lovely I’d like to meet her. Will she be coming to London?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said dismissively, scrunched up the sandwich packet and checked his watch. ‘I’d better head back.’

  Nora nodded and rose to her feet without too much protest from the uncooperative suit.

  ‘Do you still have access to police databases at home?’

  Andreas nodded.

  ‘Please would you check what happened to Kurt Damtoft from Vestergården? I can’t find him anywhere.’

  ‘I’ll look into it. See you Saturday.’

  ‘Yep. I’ll rent a car and pick you up,’ Nora said in her most casual voice, and waved goodbye to him before making her way to the tube.

  X

  She kicked herself mentally all the way home. What the hell did she think she was doing? When she entered the flat, she nearly choked from the stuffy heat and the tight suit. She tore off her clothes and turned on the cold tap in the bathroom.

  Five merciless minutes under a cold shower and a Coke Light straight from the fridge later, the world began to look more normal. She put on a pair of shorts and a moth-eaten T-shirt with a black-and-white picture of The Cure and a caption proclaiming that ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, then sat down resolutely in front of her laptop and pulled out her notebook.

  It was about time she wrote that obituary, but when she happened to come across an article on a Brussels top summit, she had a flashback to a school trip where she and Andreas had played truant and sneaked away from a Danish EU politician's never-ending lecture on the budgetary powers of the European Parliament, and had found a bar in the African quarter of the Belgian capital.

  She rewound her memory to the small room with the hypnotic bongo drum rhythm and clear rum served in shot glasses with cane sugar and lime. Had they come close to having a moment that night? But then they had bumped into a group of drunken Brits who insisted on dragging them across the road to an Irish pub and their intimacy dissolved into partying, chaos and Guinness.

  Had he wanted them to be more than friends even then?

  Suddenly Nora knew what would help. She clicked on Skype, saw to her delight that Trine was online and called her old school friend.

  Trine had turned her boundless capacity for empathy into a career and trained as a psychotherapist. Since publishing a couple of popular books on relationships, she had become something of an expert and one of those familiar faces TV journalists invite into their studios for softer stories. Trine always turned up with a red pout and thick, yellow plaits. That was her USP and it worked. Everyone remembered the relationship therapist with the Heidi plaits and the Marilyn Monroe lips, and Trine raked it in giving lectures and holding weekend workshops for broken-hearted Danes.

  But to Nora she was still the chubby teenager who once threw up in her father's front garden on her way to a party before collapsing on top of her brand new glasses.

  ‘Hello, gorgeous. Long time no see,’ Trine said, turning on her webcam.

  Nora could see that Trine was sitting on the terrace outside her holiday cottage near Rørvig. At the edge of the screen she could make out a glass of white wine.

  ‘I’m just putting the finishing touches to my latest bestseller: The Ins and Outs of Jealousy. I’ve promised my publisher I’ll deliver next week. I’ve dispatched Johannes and the kids to my mother-in-law in Sweden,’ Trine explained, and lit a cigarette.

  Nora shook her head. ‘And you’re still smoking?’

  Trine giggled guiltily. ‘Only on social occasions, as you can see. And this is a social occasion, isn’t it? Is the smoke bothering you?’ she said, deliberately blowing smoke straight at the screen.

  Nora feigned a coughing fit.

  ‘So, my friend. Found yourself an English gentleman yet? Please say you’re calling to invite me to your wedding at a Scottish castle with kilts, bagpipes and the Loch Ness monster. I’m desperate for a break.’

  Nora could feel herself blushing. ‘Eh. No, I wouldn’t say that,’ she said.

  ‘Right, then, what is it? Something's up. You know I can always tell,’ Trine declared with expert confidence and sipped her wine.

  Three seconds later, Nora was looking at a strange pattern of droplets across the screen. Trine had spluttered her wine everywhere at the utterance of a single word: Andreas.

  ‘Are we talking about Andreas-Andreas? I mean, our Andreas? Andreas T. Jansson?’ she asked when she had fetched some kitchen towel and dried the screen.

  ‘Yes,’ Nora sighed before launching into an account of how he had unexpectedly announced his arrival on Facebook, and later turned up in London. About St James's Park. About PC Perfect, as Nora had already decided to nickname Birgitte.

  Trine shook her head when Nora finally paused for breath.

  ‘Nora Sand. You have the world's worst timing!’ she concluded. ‘Didn’t you know that man pined for you — and I use the word pined advisedly — from the moment he first met you?’

  ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘No, you didn’t because you were blind! While you were messing about with that Salomon who played the saxophone, Andreas suffered in silence. He was so hard hit that everyone could see it. Everyone except you.’

  ‘His name was Samuel and he played the clarinet,’ Nora interjected meekly.

  ‘Whatever.’ Once she was in full flow, Trine was unstoppable.

  ‘But why didn’t anyone tell me?’ Nora protested.

  Trine counted her fingers. ‘One: because it was obvious, it would be like telling you the sky is blue. Two: because it was Andreas's business if he wanted you to know. Three: hmm. There is no three.’

  Nora rolled her eyes.

  ‘You were the class soap opera. We even had bets on the outcome. I, for one, know that Markus lost a hundred kroner when Andreas finally plucked up the courage to tell you at Hanne's party, and you turned him down.’

  Nora winced at the thought. Trine continued castigating her.
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  ‘And now — now of all times — you’ve finally noticed Andreas. Do you want to know what that's all about?’

  Nora had a hunch that she didn’t, but Trine was now in full psychoanalysis mood.

  ‘You’re attracted to unavailable men. And it wouldn’t be the first time. Remember when we went Interrailing and you lusted after that blond Swede on Mykonos for a week? When he finally asked you out, you lost all interest. I think you have a built-in reluctance to commit. Otherwise you would have been paired off long ago. The only reason Andreas suddenly interests you, is because he's no longer available. That's your pattern,’ Trine declared.

  ‘But what if I was feeling this way before I even knew about Birgitte?’ Nora objected.

  ‘You probably sensed it subconsciously,’ Trine opined. Nora nodded pensively.

  ‘So it's just a fixation?’

  ‘Yes. Sleep on it. It’ll be gone tomorrow. Have a glass of wine. Who knows, it might even pass in thirty minutes,’ Denmark's favourite couples’ therapist promised her.

  They said goodbye as always with a promise that it was about time to meet up, either in London, at Trine's holiday cottage or in Copenhagen.

  Nora followed doctor's orders and found some leftover white wine in her fridge. It smelled sour, but after a few gulps, it didn’t taste too bad. She stared down into the street, wondering if she should go food shopping, when a faint ping from her computer announced a new email.

  It was from him.

  Something fluttered inside her chest.

  The email didn’t contain ardent declarations of love. Just a short and direct message.

  ‘Kurt Damtoft's last known address is with his daughter Liselotte Bruun, who lives in Søndervig. He has a criminal record, but has served his time,’ Andreas wrote, before concluding his email with a functional: ‘See you Saturday.’

  See you? Was that really the best he could do? No love? No hugs? Just see you.

  Nora shook her head as if hoping she could shake off thoughts of Andreas, and chanted a mantra, which had served her well in the past: Get a grip.

  The man has a girlfriend. He's taken. Forbidden fruit.

  Saturday was four days away. Four days and a trip to Denmark during which she had to get over him.

  10

  She regretted not calling in advance as she drove the rental car up in front of the glum, yellow brick bungalow on the outskirts of Søndervig.

  It had been raining pretty much the whole time since she landed at Karup Airport in central Jutland, and it wasn’t until she turned into Fjordvejen that the water masses retreated, only to lie across the sky like a leaden threat of more to come.

  The front garden was covered in coarse yellow grass, and by the front door there was a blue ceramic pot with a withered plant that might once have been a widow's-thrill.

  The house looked as if no one had lived there for months. Nora walked up to the door and pressed the doorbell without getting her hopes up.

  Shortly afterwards the door was opened by a gangly boy of about thirteen. He was wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt and tight, black stretch jeans that highlighted his stork legs.

  He said nothing. Just stared quizzically at her.

  ‘Erm. I’m looking for Liselotte Bruun. Does she live here?’ Nora said.

  He looked her up and down. ‘Are you from the council?’ he wanted to know.

  Nora shook her head.

  ‘She's in her studio,’ he said at length and made to close the door.

  Nora had time to jam the door with her foot. ‘And where's that?’

  He stared at her as if she had just announced that she didn’t know where Ringkøbing was, or that the North Sea was wet.

  ‘Liselotte's Pottery Studio. In the high street. There's just the one,’ he said with a roll of his eyes.

  She found it straight away. The white painted building lay slightly recessed from the road connecting the high street to the holiday homes area, but the big sign was impossible to miss. The shop was filled with blue glazed pots similar to the one by the front door, lidded casserole dishes and jugs with Søndervig written in black. A handwritten sign in the window announced that they spoke German in the tourist season.

  An old-fashioned bell rang when Nora opened the door.

  She could hear noise coming from the back room, and soon afterwards a tired-looking, red-haired woman in her mid-forties appeared. She wiped her clay-stained hands on a dark blue apron.

  ‘Yes?’

  Nora was about to say something when the door opened again and a German couple entered the shop. Instead she went over to a stand with postcards of the traditional images that are sold across Denmark every summer: heather hearts, dunes, sunsets and lyme grass.

  The woman served the couple in perfect German, and then turned to Nora: ‘So, have you made up your mind yet?’

  ‘I’m not here to buy anything. I’m looking for Kurt Damtoft. Do you know where he is?’

  The woman's eyes narrowed, the expression around her mouth grew bitter and her body slumped.

  ‘Well, good luck with that. Does he owe you money, too? Funny, you look too smart to lend money to a guy like him.’ Her voice had hardened.

  Nora shook her head. ‘No. It's about an old story. I’m a reporter and I’m investigating what really happened to the girls from the England ferry,’ she explained.

  The woman seemed to deliberate for a moment, then she held out her hand. ‘I’m Liselotte. You’d better come round to the back. There's coffee.’

  Nora followed her into a room with a low ceiling and dominated by a large kiln. A wet lump of clay was sitting on a turntable, and there was a kettle and a couple of home-made mugs on a narrow Formica table by the room's only window.

  Liselotte filled the kettle from a tap by the kiln, turned it on and found a crumpled packet of Marlboro Light in her pocket.

  ‘I’ve only got instant,’ she said.

  ‘Never drink anything else,’ Nora grinned.

  Liselotte took a seat by the turntable, while Nora poured water into both mugs and sat down on a stool by the table.

  Liselotte shaped the clay, the cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. A few quick turns later, she cut a jug from the turntable with a piece of wire and placed it on the shelf to dry next to eight other identical jugs.

  Then she sat down on a battered olive-green office chair, the back of which creaked every time she moved.

  ‘My dad. My dad. Well, what's there to say,’ she said, taking a deep drag on her cigarette.

  ‘He's an alcoholic. That's no secret, I guess. Steals anything that isn’t nailed down to get money to buy booze. He no longer lives with us. We couldn’t take any more, Malte and me.’

  She heaved a sigh.

  ‘The boy couldn’t keep seeing his grandad going to the dogs like that. Towards the end we had to lock everything up. The telly. The stereo. Malte's PlayStation. He stole everything,’ she said.

  Nora looked at her. ‘That must have been hard.’

  ‘Worst thing is, it was that case that tipped him over the edge. Before that he used to like a strong beer from time to time, sure. But after those two girls went missing and he was charged with negligence because he had had a couple of elephant beers on the ferry, it was as if he gave up completely. He started drinking every single day.’

  Liselotte blew on her coffee then sipped it. ‘My mum pissed off soon afterwards. We haven’t seen her since she met a bus driver and moved to Germany.’

  Nora guided her back to the story. ‘Do you remember anything from back then — anything about the girls?’

  Liselotte laughed with derision. ‘What do you think? We lived at Vestergården in a flat that came with the job, and my dad insisted on treating every single one of those losers as if they were family. At least once a week they would come round for dinner. The only one who ever thought it was a great idea was my dad,’ she snorted.

  ‘I was the same age as Lisbeth and Lulu, and I was supposed to have gone
with them to London. But my mum said no. She didn’t want me mixing with people like that more than I had to.’

  ‘What were the girls like?’ Nora asked.

  ‘Lulu was as meek as a lamb. I believe that her mum had been drinking heavily while she was pregnant, so Lulu was a bit dim. Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t retarded, but she wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, either. I remember one of the boys made her think you could get a tan from sitting in front of the test card on the telly, so she did that for a couple of nights wearing only her knickers, until my dad found out.’

  ‘Now Lisbeth, on the other hand. Lisbeth was a bitch. Cold, calculating and terrifying. If she found out you had a weakness, then she would chip, chip, chip away at it until you felt like shit.’

  Liselotte touched her red hair subconsciously. ‘Now for me it was my red hair, of course. But for some of the bigger boys it wasn’t just their appearance. She had picked up some information about their home life and she knew how to press all the right buttons. There was one guy, Erik, whose mum was a junkie and a hooker. And then there was Oluf's dad, who was a paedophile and in prison. She never let them forget it. And she was so devious that the grown-ups rarely found out. A whispered comment here and there, a sly glance. She was actually quite good-looking, but she was just as rotten on the inside as she was pretty on the outside. I don’t think my dad ever really realised how bad things were with her.’

  The forgotten cigarette in the ashtray had turned to ashes. Liselotte stubbed it out and lit a fresh one.

  ‘I only went to my dad about her once. I had got a boyfriend by then, his name was Jens. I’d met him in the youth club and I really fancied him; I had invited him home for the first time. That night I had my first kiss,’ she said with an embittered expression around her mouth.

  ‘Lisbeth must have seen him turn up on his Puch Maxi, and waited for him to leave. I don’t know what she said to him, but he never came back. I was distraught. Later she told me gleefully how she had dragged him into the bushes in the back garden, and that they had done it in full view of my bedroom while I was sitting behind the blinds dreaming about him and doodling in my diary. We were only fifteen. Jens, of course, denied everything, but he wouldn’t look me in the eye, and I knew that Lisbeth was telling the truth. I tried to speak to my dad about it, but he just said that's love when you’re young, and that we would probably work it out amongst ourselves. But Lisbeth wasn’t in love with Jens. She just wanted to ruin it for me. Have something that was mine.’