The Butterfly House Read online

  I wish I were dead.

  Apart from that, things had gone fine from there. Unexpectedly enough Svend had been overjoyed about the news and had never questioned the prospect of parenthood. The pregnancy had passed without a hitch. The first-trimester screening had looked great, the birth itself was quick and uncomplicated. She had defied the bad odds and beaten every conceivable record for first-time pregnancies for the over-forty set. But when her little baby girl was placed in her arms, neat and clean, and immediately started sucking, Anette hadn’t felt a thing. The bond, which was supposed to occur instinctively, had to be forced along, and the love was somehow hard to feel. For her, anyway.

  For Svend it was different.

  In the last two and a half months, his love for the new, tiny human being had only grown stronger and stronger. The look on his face when he held her! His eyes beaming with pride. Svend swam like a fish into family life and was already more a father than anything else. Anette was trying; she really was. If only she wasn’t so exhausted all the time.

  She rested her elbows on her thighs, leaned forward, and put her forehead on her hands.

  “Honey, are you asleep?”

  Anette lifted her head with a jerk, her neck so tight she instantly felt a headache looming. Svend’s voice came from the hallway. He must be standing right outside.

  “I’m peeing,” she said. “Can’t it wait, like, two minutes?”

  She heard the irritation in her own voice; the same resentment she had often witnessed in other women, but rarely displayed herself. Now it was like she couldn’t get rid of it. She stood up, washed her hands, and opened the door.

  “She’s hungry. That’s why she won’t settle. See, she’s rooting!” Svend gently lifted their daughter up and kissed her on the forehead before holding her out to Anette.

  She reached out her arms and felt the already familiar spasm of fear that she would drop the delicate life on the floor. People who compare having dogs to having children don’t know anything, she thought, even though she had been exactly one of those until two and a half months ago. She looked at the crying baby in her arms.

  “I miss the boys,” she said. “When are we picking them up?”

  “The dogs will be fine at my mom’s for another couple of weeks,” Svend said, eyeing her with concern. “They go for walks in the forest three times a day. We need to focus on little Gudrun right now.”

  “Stop calling her that! We haven’t agreed on a name yet.” Anette squeezed past her husband with a brusqueness that forced him up against the wall of the narrow hallway outside their bathroom.

  “I thought you wanted her name to be Gudrun?”

  “I’m going to go sit in the car and breastfeed her,” Anette said, heading for the front door. “And please don’t say anything. I just prefer it out there.” She slammed the door behind her, as hard as she could with the baby in her arms, jogged through the rain to the car, and eased the door open. The baby stopped crying, maybe because of the unexpected sensation of rainwater hitting her face.

  The car smelled familiar and safe, of work and dogs. Anette made herself comfortable, pulled up her blouse, and put her daughter to a swollen breast. The baby latched on and started sucking right away, settling down. Anette exhaled heavily and tried to shake the persistent feeling of stress in her body. She gently wiped a raindrop off the baby’s forehead and stroked her soft scalp. When she lay like this, quiet and peaceful, parenthood felt good. It was the crying and the nighttime battles that were hard to cope with. And maternity leave. Anette missed her job.

  She looked out at the house. Svend was probably vacuuming or tidying up. With a quick push she opened the glove compartment and pulled out her police radio. It was actually supposed to be sitting in its charging station at police headquarters, but Anette had not gotten around to dropping it off. It was only a matter of time before someone noticed the radio was missing and deactivated it, but she would enjoy listening to it until then. She checked to make sure the volume was low, so as not to scare the baby, and switched it on. The familiar static sound caused a rush of emotion in the pit of her stomach.

  And we need an escort for the deceased at Old Market Square in Copenhagen. We’re going to transport the victim from where she was found to the trauma center for the autopsy. We’ll maintain barriers on Frederiksberggade, and around Old Market Square until the crime scene technicians from NKC East are done gathering evidence and effects.…

  A murder at Old Market Square? Her colleagues from police headquarters would be investigating that. Anette winced, feeling sore. Why did something as natural as breastfeeding have to hurt so darned much?

  We need to obtain surveillance footage from all the cameras in the area. An investigative team led by Investigator Kørner will be in charge of this.…

  Investigator Jeppe Kørner, who worked in the police’s crimes against persons unit, section 1, better known as Homicide. Her partner.

  Kørner and Werner, now without Werner. Werner, now without her job. Anette switched off the radio.

  * * *

  “DOES ANYONE KNOW what’s keeping Saidani?” Jeppe asked casually, tinkering with the computer cables, his back to his colleagues. In principle he was the most likely to know where Detective Sara Saidani was since he had spent most of the night in her bed, but—they had agreed—for the time being this detail didn’t concern the rest of the Homicide crew.

  “Maybe she has a sick kid, like usual?” Detective Thomas Larsen guessed. “Rubella? Plague? Those kids are constantly coming down with something that keeps her from coming to work.” He tossed the paper cup he’d just drained of expensive takeout coffee into the trash in a neat arc. Larsen had neither children nor any desire to acquire them—a view he did not hesitate to share with his colleagues.

  Jeppe looked at the clock over the door. It was 10:05.

  “We’ll have to start without her,” he said.

  He made sure the computer was connected and adjusted the brightness of the image that flickered before him on the meeting room’s flat screen. Then he turned and nodded to his twelve colleagues who were waiting, notebooks on their laps and eyes alert. A mutilated woman found in a fountain on Strøget was no everyday occurrence.

  “All right!” Jeppe began. “The call came in to Dispatch at five forty-two a.m. and we had the first patrol car on the scene six minutes later. The physician who rode along with the first responders declared the victim dead at six fifteen a.m.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Lima Eleven immediately decided the death was suspicious and called us.”

  The door to the meeting room quietly opened and Sara Saidani slipped in and found a chair. Her dark curls glistened with rainwater, and her eyes beamed. Jeppe experienced the familiar surge of feeling wide awake when she was nearby. Sara Saidani, colleague in the Investigations Unit, mother of two, divorced, ethnically Tunisian, with hazel eyes and skin like honey.

  “Welcome, Saidani.” Jeppe glanced down at the notepad in front of him even though he knew quite well what it said.

  “The deceased has been preliminarily identified as health-care aide Bettina Holte, fifty-four years old, resides in Husum. She was reported missing yesterday, so her picture is in POLSAS, but the identification hasn’t been confirmed yet.”

  POLSAS was the police’s internal reporting system, where all information about open and closed cases was stored. It sounded fancy and efficient. It wasn’t.

  “Her family has been summoned to an identification, so we’ll hear back soon. The body was naked, lying facedown, as you can see in this photo.”

  Jeppe pointed to the grainy image, pushed a button, and moved to a close-up of a white body in black water.

  “According to a witness statement,” Jeppe said, “the body was not in the fountain at five a.m., so we’re operating on the assumption that she was brought there between five and five forty a.m. We’re working on securing footage from all the surveillance cameras.…”

  “Kørner?”

  “Ye
s, Saidani?”

  “I took the liberty of gathering the footage from the city’s cameras in that area and looking through them. That’s why I was late.” Sara Saidani held up a USB flash drive pinched between two fingers. “The footage from the camera above the convenience store is good. Fast-forward to five seventeen a.m.”

  Jeppe accepted the flash drive with an appreciative nod, opened the recording, and fast-forwarded. The screen showed a sped-up version of a dark, empty public square without any movement other than a bicycle tipping over in the wind. At 5:16 a.m., Jeppe slowed the playback to normal speed, and after a minute a shadow appeared at the top of the frame.

  “He’s coming from Studiestræde, heading toward the fountain,” Larsen said enthusiastically. “What’s he riding on?”

  “He or she is riding a cargo bike. Just watch!” Sara snapped her fingers in irritation and pointed to the screen.

  The dark figure approached the fountain and the streetlamps over Frederiksberggade. Sure enough, the person rode in on a cargo bike and was covered by a dark-colored rain poncho with the hood on. It was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman, or even a human. The bike stopped by the fountain, and the rider dismounted easily, as if the move was familiar.

  “He gets off like a man, swinging his leg around behind the seat,” Larsen said. He stood up and demonstrated what he meant.

  Sara quickly pointed out, “That’s how I get off my bike, too. That doesn’t mean anything. Now watch the cargo.…”

  The figure in the rain poncho pulled a dark cloth or plastic cover off the long flatbed of what looked like a cargo bike. The bright skin of a dead body lit up in the dark. The figure quickly and effortlessly lifted it over the edge of the basin. Once the body was in the water, the figure continued to stand there.

  Jeppe counted two seconds, five.

  “What’s he doing?” he asked.

  “Staring,” Larsen suggested. “Saying goodbye.”

  After seven long seconds, the dark figure climbed onto the cargo bike and rode away from the fountain, back in the same direction it had come from.

  Jeppe waited for a second to make sure there was nothing more to see, then stopped the playback. A murderer on a cargo bike, only in Denmark! He sighed.

  “Saidani, would you please send the footage to our forensic friends at NKC and ask them to look for other surveillance cameras in the area so we can track where the bike rider came from? We ought to be able to follow his or her route through most of the city.”

  Sara’s eyes settled on him from the second row of chairs. She looked happy, her face bright with enthusiasm. Love, perhaps? Jeppe hurriedly averted his gaze before he broke into an inappropriate smile.

  “As always, we’re working with how, why, and who,” he said. “Falck and I will be partners; Saidani, you’re stuck with Larsen.”

  Larsen raised both arms in a victory pose, and Jeppe felt a stab of irritation that the fool got to hang out with Sara. But there was no way around it. They couldn’t risk people gossiping.

  “Falck and I will take the autopsy and then talk to Bettina Holte’s immediate family, assuming of course that it is her. Saidani checks mail, phone, and social media as usual.”

  Sara nodded and then asked, “Are all of her things missing—her wallet, phone, the clothes she was wearing?”

  “Nothing has turned up yet.”

  “Ask her family members to hand over her computer and get her phone number so I can pull her call history. Maybe she communicated with the killer,” Sara said.

  “Will do,” Jeppe said. “Larsen handles witnesses and talks to her colleagues, neighbors, and whoever else there might be to question.”

  Jeppe looked around the room at the team. His own investigation team plus reinforcements, ready for the first twenty-four-hour, labor-intensive push to gather evidence.

  “We need to do a door-to-door around Old Market Square and question any potential witnesses we find in connection with that. Maybe there was a sleepless neighbor who looked out a window at quarter past five this morning.”

  One of the officers raised a gigantic paw in the air and nodded, the light bouncing off his bald head. Jeppe recognized him as either Morten or Martin, one of the young, recent hires.

  “I’ll take the door-to-door,” he volunteered.

  “Excellent,” Jeppe said. “You’ll report directly to Detective Larsen. Thank you.”

  The bald Morten or Martin nodded again.

  “We need to examine the bike from the surveillance footage. Can we identify the make? Who sells them? Was a bike like that stolen in the last couple of months? And so on.”

  Larsen volunteered, brash and ambitious as always. Jeppe nodded to him and then looked at the superintendent in the front row.

  “Supe, I’m assuming that you’ll brief the press?”

  Her somber eyes met his. Supe, as she was called, had been threatening to retire for a long time, but as far as Jeppe could tell, she was perkier and sharper than ever. And he predicted that she would keep it up for a few more years. Now she gave him a youthful thumbs-up. She found press conferences only mildly disruptive, whereas to Jeppe they were almost insurmountable obstacles.

  He smiled at her gratefully.

  “Any questions?” he asked, looking around the room. His eyes rested on Detective Falck, who stared down at the table in front of him, as if something was expected of him that he wasn’t able to do. He had just returned from a relatively long disability leave due to stress and did not seem entirely back in fighting form. Falck was an old-timer, whose mustache competed with his eyebrows for the prize for bushiest and grayest. His potbelly was usually kept in check by a pair of colorful suspenders, and his general work tempo varied between moderate and snail’s pace.

  Jeppe slapped his hand on the table and declared, “Let’s get to it!”

  Everyone got up and moved toward the door, holding notepads and empty coffee cups, while they milled around chatting and arranging details. Sara Saidani and Thomas Larsen left the room together, Larsen with his hand casually on her shoulder. Jeppe ran his tongue over a blister he had on the inside of his cheek and bit down on it. A minute later only he and the superintendent were left in the meeting room.

  She regarded him soberly and said, “Kørner, I need you to tell me that you can run this investigation, that you’re up to it.”

  “What do you mean? You’re the one who picked me.”

  “I’m not questioning your competence,” the superintendent said, raising her eyebrows and with them her heavy eyelids.

  “So why are you asking?”

  “Calm down! I just have a bad feeling about this case. It’s not going to be an easy one to handle or solve, and you don’t have your partner.…”

  So that was her concern! That he wasn’t up to leading a big investigation without Anette Werner at his side. Jeppe smiled at her reassuringly.

  “I wonder if this case won’t be solved faster now that I don’t have Werner slowing me down.”

  The superintendent patted him on the shoulder and left the room. She did not look convinced.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Who are you talking to, Isak?”

  The young patient raised a pale face from his book and stared in surprise.

  “No one,” Isak answered. “Was I talking out loud?”

  “Yes, you were.” Social worker Simon Hartvig smiled reassuringly but without seeking eye contact.

  It was a matter of spotting the psychotic symptoms in time so they didn’t have a chance to develop. Isak seemed calm right now.

  “It’s fine,” Simon said. “Just keep reading.”

  The common room walls were painted orange and decorated with movie posters—Grease, Pretty Woman, Dumb and Dumber. Two other patients were playing foosball, and a group in the corner was making friendship-bracelet key chains, kept busy by his enthusiastic colleague Ursula. The rain drummed softly on the roof, a scent of freshly baked bread hung in the air, and soon there would be phone tim
e until lunch. This place was actually really nice. The enhanced Inpatient Ward U8 housed some of the country’s most severely mentally ill pediatric patients, children and teenagers with conditions like paranoid schizophrenia. But on a calm Monday morning like the present, one might easily believe that this was just a regular, old boarding school. A boarding school with guitar lessons and a twenty-four-hour staff, crafts, home cooking, and locks on the windows.

  Simon sat back in his chair and peered out the window at the hospital grounds. The copper beech just outside dripped discouragingly, making the yard outside the Bispebjerg Hospital’s pediatric psychiatry center look more like a cemetery than a place for children to play. It angered him that the kids didn’t have a more inspiring outdoor space, a natural area that could be utilized and serve as a backdrop for edifying experiences. He had been lobbying to set up a kitchen garden on the grounds for a long time. All modern research showed a clear correlation between outdoor activity, a healthy diet, and mental well-being, so nothing could be more appropriate than a kitchen garden at a psychiatric hospital, could it?

  The bureaucracy was unbearably slow, though, and his previous proposals to get the cafeteria to go organic and to convert a shuttered section of the hospital into a rec center had both failed. But this time things looked more hopeful.

  Along with his colleague Gorm, he had set up a committee six months earlier that wrote letters to the city council and collected signatures from employees and family members. So far they had managed to raise 150,000 kroner for the kitchen-garden project. Unfortunately the plans were on hold with the city’s Technical and Environmental Administration, which believed that the current hospital grounds should be preserved, possibly even protected as a conservation area. But the committee wasn’t planning on giving up. Simon would see to that.