Politiken Literary Agency

Erik Valeur

Logbook from a Lifewreck

Translated into the English by Agnes Broome

Politikens Forlag

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Author’s prefaceA PREMONITIONThe premonition came to him in his dreams, while he was sleeping, smiling in his sleep, like children do.The woman. The sea. Her hands. Her hands were reaching out to him, as though the woman was calling for him to come. Viggo Larssen woke with a small yelp that went unnoticed, because he always slept alone. As soon as he woke in the dark, he instantly knew what the dream meant, and that was why he would come to call the nocturnal vision of the woman The Premonition when he got older. He told no one about his fear; not his mother, not his grandmother, definitely not his grandfather, who was notorious in the neighbourhood for his bad temper and suffered from persistent, crippling migraines.They were grownups. They wouldn’t understand and they already thought he was peculiar. That was the word the grownups would use. Like everyone else, they feared the unknown, the unusual, the visions that could not be explained. That kind of phenomenon

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belonged to other worlds and must never be allowed to invade their neighbourhood.Viggo Larssen let his strange dream live on in a place no one could find, that he alone had access to. From time to time, the dream recurred. The hands. The sea. The woman, who looked like his mother. A dark shadow, that whipped the water into white foam around her feet. But the shadow beneath the surface never reached up into the light before he awoke. Even at that tender age, he understood that his nocturnal visions required deeper thought than anything he had encountered thus far in his young life. No one on this Earth would be able to relate to the strange dream in any way, so he preferred to be alone. He thought about death, but that was a dangerous word, and he never used it while awake. He shoved all his fear into a dark corner of his mind, like children do. When as a 15-year-old he recognised his premonition in another person’s description, it did not happen as the result of decades of research or heretofore unheard of perspicacity, but simply as a result of that in which Destiny has been the one true expert since the dawn of time – surpassed by neither God nor the Devil – happenstance.The simple fact was that there was a confluence of otherwise unrelated events that no one had foreseen and no thought can explain, which created a pattern that Viggo Larssen nevertheless already knew existed.He did not for a second doubt the existence of the pattern – but he concealed his knowledge, as he had concealed his dream.

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When the dramatic events at the Solbygaard nursing home in Gentofte brought an end to this dormancy, he had long since grown up.1 August 2015

Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes…… And no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance!Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince

PrologueTHE MISSING WIDOWThe Prime Minister’s Office- Thursday 1 January 2015, late at nightThe Prime Minister shook his impressively massive and – as wicked tongues insisted on calling it – grotesquely heavy head.He was clutching it between a pair of mitts large enough to envelop it completely.

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A newspaper journalist had once (supposedly drawing on the work of a cranial osteologist) determined that it “weighed at least seven pounds” – more than a medium-sized bowling ball – and right now you could almost hear his thoughts rattling around behind the furrowed brow of the Head of Government, unable to find an outlet.Once upon a time, the Prime Minister’s mother had given him a stack of comic books about trapper Davy Crockett, and now the man, long since grown-up, looked, absurdly enough, like a wounded bear in that comic, crashing through a thicket, rearing up on its colossal hind legs and emitting a deafening roar that made no noise, but that you could see soaring up and up towards the sky in enormous, oversized speech bubbles. Raging yet silent agony, followed by legions of exclamation points, which lent the dying warrior an almost human aspect…… in real life, not a sound escaped the thick lips that dominated the Prime Minister’s expression of tightly controlled fury. Prime Ministers rarely raise their voices in their official capacity, or even in private. Instead he got to his feet and paced around his desk in a large, futile circle, before returning to his chair and sitting back down. The seat and backrest were made of Congolese buffalo leather; the chair had been a gift from an African delegation that had failed to consider their host’s impressive fighting weight; every part of the relatively slender piece of furniture creaked under the bulk of his gargantuan body. The man sitting across from him

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had kept his seat. His head was cast in the same mould (though it was of slightly less ponderous proportions) as the Prime Minister’s, and it was obvious that the two men were closely related, and that they had been born no more than a few years apart and taken a strong likeness to the parent who had contributed the dominant genes. Their eyebrows were grey and thick, their foreheads rose up high above their broad noses, and what hair had once adorned their heads was gone, save for a wreath at the back.The younger man leaned forward (as though to calm them both with that one gesture), but without speaking, of course; he was, after all, number two in the realm. The positions held by the two brothers, as Prime Minister and Justice Minister respectively in the dark blue government that had succeeded the blue-red coalition in 2011, had put everyone in mind of two famous American counterparts, the assassinated Kennedy brothers. The press had wasted no time in annexing the wildly embellished myth of the Kennedy clan, to which Denmark suddenly had a tenuous claim, christening the two senior politicians and their broods of power hungry sons and daughters the Blegman dynasty. The Danish nation’s first truly famous political dynasty was – much like the Kennedy clan in the sixties – headed by an imposing widow; her husband, who had been an ungodly tyrant, had passed away at a relatively young age, after which she took control of the family. The widow Blegman was almost ninety, but was deeply revered, even after the brothers had been forced to move her into the nursing home Solbygaard

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in the posh suburb of Gentofte. The Widow Blegman had come down with a serious case of pneumonia, which refused to clear up, but the first few months at the home, with its beautiful view of tall trees in a park-like garden, seemed to have done her a world of good. And yet, tonight, the widow Blegman was the problem. “Where is she?!” said Palle Blegman, who since his youth had been known among his friends (and in time among him enemies as well) as The Bear. His middle name was Bjørn, and people read into that what they wanted. His voice was remarkably deep and his question was not a strange one, though his artless way of phrasing it made it sound ever so slightly inane. The youngest member of the country’s most powerful duo, Poul Blegman, replied in a slightly higher register, but with virtually the same naïve tone, with the only thing he could say: “I don’t know”.Neither one of the remarks would have been suitable for public consumption, or even to be heard outside the high-ceilinged room, the country’s most lavish, which people had taken to calling, slightly disrespectfully, the Bear’s Den. The two brief utterances revealed a bewilderment the Blegman brothers never displayed publically, not when giving speeches and not when talking to voters. Here, in the embrace of desperation, their voices took on the same deep tone, the kind that ends in a rumbling in the chest long after the last syllable is spoken.“He must have some kind of goddamn theory…” The Bear opined.

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“He’s fucking pedantic – he makes a virtue of working incredibly… slowly, too slowly,” his only brother replied.The object of their contempt was the capital’s most experienced police officer and the Head of Homicide – known to the nation by one single name: the Commissioner. He had obviously been asked to lead the investigation that was now expanding by the minute and would soon cover extend far beyond the nursing home in Gentofte and the affluent streets surrounding it; an investigation focused on just one person: their mother.The Commissioner’s record was impeccable. The brothers had sent for him immediately, but with a few hours having passed with no tangible results, their patience was now wearing thin.“He’s screwing us over…” Once again the younger of the Blegman brothers furiously underlined the central words.The Prime Minister sat back down and raised his hands, cupping them around his chin, cheeks and temples. If anyone had seen him so openly frustrated, they would still not have believed it possible.“I’m calling him.”“No.” Palle Blegman shook his enormous head twice, and the two men looked more like a couple of wounded Davy Crockett bears than ever (the famous trapper could kill six or seven in a single comic book). “I’ll do it myself.”There were journalists who had smugly renamed the Blegman dynasty the Clan of the Cave Bear, but no one dared to write that in their paper, and certainly not say

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it out loud on television. Even in a land with a press that took endless pride in being critical and courageous, there was something threatening and terrifying about the two brothers, which made otherwise merciless critics pull their punches, sensing that even the most modern of weapons might fail and cost the attacker his life.The Prime Minister reached for the phone.

*

The Commissioner’s Office-Thursday 1 January, just before midnightThe Commissioner was a stylish yet unobtrusive man. He wasn’t particularly tall, but nor did he look squat, he was neither fat nor thin, not too dark nor too light, and had it not been for his aura of authority (which sometimes came across as hostility) he would have been a perfect example of the kind of typical Dane you pass in the street every day.To place such a calm and balanced man at the centre of the monstrous police HQ at the heart of the capital – and to have him spearhead the fight against the most gruesome of human crimes – might have seemed slightly absurd, but he was the best at what he did and everyone knew it. The Commissioner shook his head for what was at least the tenth time that night and turned to his second in command, who was known only as “Number Two” in the long hallways the Homicide Directorate. Outside of the police HQ, no one knew him at all.

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“This is completely insane. Who abducts an old lady from a nursing home, and what in god’s name for?” Number Two replied without hesitation, as was his habit: “Money”. He delivered the statement matter-of-factly. There were people in Homicide who could no longer recall his real name, and his contributions to discussions (or more penetrating analyses) were rarely of the long and convoluted kind. Consequently, he was, in his inconspicuous way, an efficient investigator and as far back as anyone could remember, he had been the Commissioner’s undisputed favourite and only confidant. They had gone through training together, they had been partners on late-night patrols around Dyrehavsbakken and in the seediest part of the city when they first joined the force. “Ransom?” The Chief of Homicide said. “Maybe. Terrorism… no. Then they would have cut her head off and left in the middle of Rådhuspladsen a long time ago or blown up the whole nursing home, don’t you think?”The brutal nursing home scenario made his aide-de-camp close his eyes for a moment, possibly picturing the smoking ruins. He had a reputation for being more sensitive than his superior, behind the hard-bitten façade. The office the two of them shared at HQ was not very large and contained nothing at all beyond two armchairs, a Brazilian rosewood desk and two office chairs made of blonde walnut with wide, comfortable armrests. “The clan… the dynasty… is affluent, but there are far richer families. Sure, they are influential, but…” – the Commissioner’s moment of hesitation was followed by another headshake – “... no, it doesn’t make sense. We

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all know she’s old and frail. That’s public knowledge, so if anyone wanted the Widow dead and on her way to Heaven – or Hell – they just had to sit on their hands for a few months. It doesn’t add up.”This was the third version of the same statement he’d made in less than thirty seconds, and Number Two could already sense his superior’s hatred of this unknown adversary – the hatred that fuelled the drive for which he was so renowned. A predecessor in his job had remarked, slightly pompously, that “you hunt a beast but capture a human” – but that was not how the current Commissioner saw things. In his view, beasts remained beasts, even if some namby-pamby judge or overly merciful god were later to have the hare-brained notion of showing leniency and forbearance. That kind of nonsense belonged in the courts on Bredgade – or the afterlife – and both places were far from Polititorvet in Copenhagen.The first officers to arrive at what was now being termed the crime scene – Solbygaard Nursing Home – had found the Widow’s small two-room flat in an almost sterilely perfect condition. A slightly upset canary sat on the uppermost perch in a birdcage on one of the windowsills. On the coffee table was a small stack of the New Year’s editions of various papers and a newsletter; everything seemed calm and serene.There was no sign of a struggle – or any kind of disturbance – no one had seen her leave and no one had seen anyone go in, but that was hardly remarkable, since the staff spent most of their time in the large office above the dining hall, usually with the door locked so they could get on with their work without distractions. Piles of paper lay scattered

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between coffee cups: schedules, forms, tables and excel sheets, all waiting for a loving hand – of the modern kind. Evaluation and quality control was here, as in the rest of the elderly care sector, the number one priority, or at least the priority that took up the most time.Half an hour later, the two police chiefs arrived in person; this missing person was, after all, the Prime Minister’s mother, and he was demanding action.The first thing they had done was to seal off the Widow’s small flat, then the ward, then the entire building and finally all of the vast, parklike area southeast of Bernstorffsvej. No more than an hour had passed since the Blegman brothers had made the call. Their mother had invited them over for six o’clock; by that time she had already disappeared, and she had not turned up for dinner shortly before either. The door to her flat had been left ajar, the two senior ministers claimed, and that was, of course, an important detail to consider. It seemed out of character for the First Lady of the Blegman Dynasty to leave anything whatsoever ajar, let alone the door to her home.The police technicians had almost immediately come upon a small piece of yellow plastic, about the size of a hand.It was found on a windowsill between two elegant china figurines of H. C. Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard and photographs of the Widow’s three sons, the youngest of whom had died very young. They had carefully put the peculiar find in a sterile bag. It did not look like something the elderly woman would have used to beautify her view.

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Ten minutes later they had found another, similar piece of plastic, this time under the Widow’s pillow. This had alarmed them considerably. Was this a sign of senility, which might explain the old woman’s disappearance, or had someone brought the yellow pieces of plastic into the flat, and if so, why?The third clue – spotted by sharp police eyes – was the most remarkable, and naturally, Number Two did not fail to appreciate its potential significance. One logical questions to the frightened manager of the nursing home was enough for him to confirm the unsettling feeling that had been growing stronger by the minute. He was no longer in any doubt…… something about the abandoned flat – the crime scene, though that word was not yet used officially - was seriously amiss. His boss quickly decided to keep the third find under wraps, and he informed the nursing home manager of his decision in a tone so intimidating her generally nervousness escalated into violent shaking. This situation was in no way covered by their work descriptions, as set out in schedules and columns, and her staff needed professional support to get through this crisis. She herself immediately went on sick leave.The technicians carefully removed the third and final find from the dresser drawer Number Two had opened. The large leather folder that had caught his eye was brown and worn, almost fraying. All signs pointed to it being very old, but the text on the small piece of cardboard attached to the front was written in black felt tip and clearly a recent addition. He had studied

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the three words indicating the contents for almost a full minute before moving.Final will, signed.It was the last piece of information, the third word, that had provoked his growing sense of unease. There was something definitive, irrevocable about the addendum, as though the act, the signature itself had been of pivotal significance. It was only later, of course, when he gingerly opened the brown cover, that the real reason for concern became clear. The old folder was empty.If there had been a will, it was gone.

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Later on, the two detectives had driven back to HQ to consider the things that required consideration, and to put together a working theory. Was the Widow’s disappearance simply the unfortunate consequence of inadequate supervision at yet another nursing home struggling with cut-backs – or perhaps the result of the sudden whim of a confused and slightly senile old lady? It seemed unlikely. All the doors to the building were locked, precisely so as to keep the confused and senile residents from wandering off, besides, the widow was perfectly lucid. She had even told the staff she was expecting a visit from her sons. The Commissioner had little time for either of these scenarios. It could, ultimately, be a kidnapping with a view to acquiring a ransom (he hated the very thought of that). Or it could be a simple act of revenge against

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the unloved dynasty as a whole – or something else entirely (something completely unknown).All these questions – and several more of the same kind – had come raining down from the Police Chief’s office a few floors up, and there was no way of answering them. They had issued a short, laconic press statement. Mere seconds later, or so it seemed to them, the police’s phone system was overwhelmed with calls and the press had initiated a round-the-clock siege of both Solbygaard and the more centrally located Police HQ.The Dynasty’s matriarch missing – possibly kidnapped, shouted the headlines on the big news sites (because apparently kidnapped had a better ring to it than abducted). They were followed by a flood of tweets and Facebook posts buzzing with rumours and doomsday predictions, and before long the whole country was seized by an overwhelming sense of exhilarated dread that could hardly be expected to dissipate until the Widow was found. Dead or alive.“No one has been in contact with…”“…threats or demands – of any kind.” The Commissioner finished his aide-de-camp’s logical reply to the Police Chief’s most relevant question and left the statement sitting on the table between them. Just then, the red phone on his right rang. The number was only known to a handful of senior businessmen and politicians, and neither of the two inspectors were in any doubt as to who was on the other end of the line. A roar was waiting for them. From the highest echelons of society and in the form of one giant speech

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bubble; this case was going to be taken more seriously than any in the history of the nation.Having two chronically choleric men at the country’s helm (two tyrants, in the true sense of that word), was one thing; to abduct their mother on the first day of the year, without any explanation, would unleash enduring, unstoppable fury.The Commissioner caught his right-hand man’s eye before straightening up in his chair and lifting the receiver. They had weathered crises and ordeals together for decades – ever since confronting Vietnam protesters, biker gangs and revolutionary squatters back when they were still in training; back when the enemy still signalled its intentions with press releases and mountains of missiles. These days, things were much less straightforward.They were both thinking about the items they had found in the abandoned rooms of the widow’s flat, which they had to conceal from the public for the time being. And from the intimidating man who in a moment would put all his frustration into words and demand immediate results.They had to preserve a measure of control over the investigation of the case that already, mere hours in, already promised to be the strangest of their long police careers.

*

The lighthouse on the cape- Thursday 1 January, midnight

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At that very moment, out on the narrow cape, by the old lighthouse, a man, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, watched the moon a few nautical miles out, high above the dark sea.The yellow disc hung, low and clear, above the spot that since time immemorial has been known as Hell’s Deep, on account of the many shipwrecks taking place there over the centuries. Most had been unavoidable, victims of unfortunate circumstance; a handful had been of a magnitude no one in the area would talk to a stranger about today.The lighthouse towering above him did not seem particularly tall, but its one bright eye had – when it was still in use – been visible over four kilometres away. Still, the abyss beneath the moon was the scene of nightmarish stories about ships and crews veering too close to shore and being caught in the gusts that rushed down the slopes of the headland and out across the water. They supposedly sounded like the breath of something otherworldly and they seized unfortunate sailors before they had time to react…… whipped the sea into foam and pulled them down into the depths.The man turned his back on the moon and the sea and walked the few steps into the lighthouse garden, which was overgrown and full of weeds and overgrown thickets: sloe, buckthorn, hawthorn and elder.There was a small stone bench to the left of the front door, in the lee of the tower. He took a seat, still with his hands in his pockets, and rested his back and shoulders against the whitewashed wall.

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When a veil of clouds eventually hid the orb of night – a few seconds before midnight – he was sitting there still, motionless and with his eyes closed, almost as though the wind and the sea and the deep rumbling of waves against rocks did not exist.If he was cold, it did not show.

PART IHELL’S DEEP

Chapter 1The lighthouse on the cape

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- Friday 2 January, morningWhen the news about the widow Blegman’s disappearance exploded in the mainstream media on the second day of the new year, I had been neighbours with Viggo Larssen for exactly three months and three days.Naturally, the case made the nation shudder with that peculiar kind of terrified excitement that is so typical of a country with a relentless desire for ever more comfort and ever fewer worries, which is portrayed as happiness in all international surveys and had just been underscored by the most consumerist and media fuelled Christmas season ever. To a people of that kind, sudden catastrophes – indeed, even the preludes to such – seem like a refreshing breeze from another world, unsettling, but nevertheless a welcome break from the everyday. When I left my ramshackle, red house in the forest, slipping and scurrying down to the edge of the deep hollow where the trees thin out, I caught a first glimpse of the white tower at the tip of the promontory; I don’t think I can ever grow tired of watching its ominous south-southeastward tilt, which makes it look as though it were being pushed backwards by the wind and the white churning of the waves against the stony coast that surrounds it. Here in the hollow, a strange depression dimpled the landscape, almost as though a giant foot had walked across the land when the world was in its infancy, leaving one enormous footprint in the soft soil of the headland. The fact that the forest opened up (because all the trees in the hollow had been removed, save the severed trunk of one white birch tree, that had been left standing for no apparent reason) contributed to my

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fantasies; I imagined a particularly violent storm from the northwest that had pushed a mighty volume of water past the reef out there, sending giant waves rolling in over the coast. They had filled the peculiar depression in the forest floor with saltwater, leaving behind a lake shaped exactly like a gigantic foot. Later on, the water had returned to the sea, but the footprint would remain forever; from the first, I called it the Giant’s Footprint. The hollow was full of the remains of the primeval-looking undergrowth that further into the forest stymied any attempts at a brisk walk from one point to another, turning all such undertakings into laborious, almost painful slogs past enormous trees and withered branches, through sloe, dog-rose and hawthorn, almost as though one had set out through the Amazonian rainforest and not the Lighthouse Forest on Røsnæs, which was no more than a hundred years old.When the mist rises from the ground on early mornings, resting like a white and golden halo over the landscape, the locals know the winter is coming to an end and that spring has finally arrived. Later on, when the winds die down slightly, a peculiar light, which the locals love and therefore ceaselessly point out and praise to anyone who will listen, creeps up the slopes; I think all places are prone to obsess about the local light, creating a narrative which is passed down the generations and consequently proudly announced to visitors at every opportunity. When the sun breaks through in earnest during those summers that are not rained out or remain stubbornly overcast, bands of nature lovers come walking or biking through Ulstrup, past the cemetery and the local shop, out along the winding country road towards the Lighthouse. Out

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there, fields spread out on either side, climbing into rolling hillocks and falling away into gentle valleys; attentive hikers can find exotic plants growing on the bluffs, such as cowslip, small pasque flower, rock rose, purple-stem cat's-tail and silver saxifrage. The truly sharp-eyed may even spot a genuinely rare butterfly – we’re talking about the small heath butterfly, the sooty copper and the Oberthür's Grizzled Skipper – or trace the croaking of the tiny fire-bellied toad, which sounds like distant church bells; and over all of this soar the red-backed shrike and the red-necked grebe, and when autumn comes, when a sudden downpour wrenches yet another chunk of rock from the side of the steep bluff atop which my house was built, you can see big flocks of migrating birds setting out on their long journeys south. As far as the local residents go, I believe they have been content with living and dying this way, on the rocky bluffs, in the thickets between massive, fallen branches that the twilight transforms into long-withered limbs. When the winter storms sweep in from the west, even the heaviest of the fallen pine trunks shift slightly, creaking in protest, and strike new poses, almost as though they were still alive, stretching (reluctantly) towards the sky, before slipping back into the soil and the embrace of the shadows once more.The white tower was built on the westernmost point of Sealand; it steadfastly guards the tip of what looks vaguely like the tip of an outstretched, crooked finger pointing unwaveringly westward, out across the Belt, towards Samsø and Jutland. If you were to turn your head a degree or two to the northwest, you would be

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staring at the spot where the seafloor suddenly changes underneath the waves, rising up and up toward Røsnæs Reef, only to fall precipitously away again further out in the Belt. It was in this area, no more than a few miles from the tip of the promontory, that church books and headstones and oral tradition told of shipwrecks and drowned sailors enough to more than justify the name bestowed on it in the olden days.Hell’s Deep. That’s what they called it.I first heard the name from the old lady who was known to the local populace as the Sea Witch. It was the day she handed me the keys to the tumble-down house in the forest east of the Lighthouse. I had rented it from her for four months for a token fee. Only an outsider would move into a house that literally teetered on the very edge of the cape’s pine-covered northern bluff, which consisted of moraine and glacial gravel from the last ice age. Every time the peninsula was hit by a storm, the squalls tore away more of the crumbling ground from under the house; from my kitchen window I could look straight down the sheer drop, down at the black waters and white-crested waves below.My landlady let go of the rusty keys (which looked like they had not been used for years) and briefly gripped my hand with her crooked fingers.Then she let go, pointed to the lighthouse, which rose in silhouette between the branches and trunks of the pines, and said in a husky voice that is sure to have contributed to her ominous moniker: “That there is the Lighthouse, and it has stood there for a hundred years. And out there…” – the old lady had extended her finger

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further out towards the horizon – “out there is Hell’s Deep, never forget it…” – her voice failed momentarily, then she found her way back to that quiet, strange whispering – “… remember never to go anywhere near that place, no matter what.”I had made a mental note of her warning, without fully understanding what she was on about. Even though serious shipwrecks had gradually become less and less common, the seafloor out there was the final resting place of hundreds, maybe even thousands of drowned sailors. So said the locals and so said the grocer in Ulstrup, who was the first person I talked to after carrying the handful of black bin bags with my clothes and sheets into my new home and going to town to stock up on supplies. The plump, practically pear-shaped man – I immediately felt comfortable around him, and I rarely do with strangers – had shook his head when I told him about my tenancy out on the crumbling bluff – in the Sea Witch’s house – as though only a crazy person would think of doing something so strange.I ignored his reaction, the way life has taught me to ignore indisputable facts since birth. A person’s actions are not always easy to explain, and almost never logical – and strange was not an epithet that offended me. I was not and have never been scared to live anywhere, not under tall trees, not on crumbling ground, not even in the most peculiar of houses, and certainly not by the sea.He promised me a weekly delivery of food and supplies; his little delivery van could make it all the way down the gravel road through the forest to the foot of the bluff where I would be able to pick up my

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things and carry them over fallen branches and up the slope to my rickety house. That was enough. That was all I needed.Thus began the months I spent living what I might call a whole new life, which I began exploring the very next day. Partly on account of my curiosity, partly – of course – because I knew there was no time to waste.

*

One of the lighthouse keepers of yore had in years past placed a solid stone bench on the eastern side of the old lighthouse, and on this Viggo Larssen was sitting, alone and motionless. I had arrived on the cape in late September and had kept a low profile the first few days.Even on the coldest days I saw him sitting outdoors, motionless, in the sea air, before getting up and setting out on an hour-long afternoon walk along the shore, out to Bavnebjerg Rock and back again.He was older, of course, and taller (and thinner, as well) than when I saw him last, in a cemetery in Søborg when he was fifteen years old. I had been a child then. Our encounter had been brief and confused and overshadowed by his grief; it had not been the time or place to meet anyone. The thing that surprised me most was his stillness. He barely turned his head, hardly moved a muscle, just sat there for hours by the lighthouse wall, staring out across the sea, sometimes with a bottle of wine and a glass next to him on the bench.

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I could usually guess, almost predict people’s thoughts before they even spoke or moved – but Viggo Larssen stumped me; if a revealing speech bubble was hovering above his head, I was powerless to break into it, try as I may. I had been watching him, secretly, for just under a week; it had not been much of a challenge. If life had taught me anything, it was patience, the patience my foster mother had, a long time ago, considered limitless and violent, almost a bit pathological. On the sixth day – it was the kind of day when the October sun hung above the headland, set against a freezing, deep blue backdrop – I made a decision, took a deep breath and rose from the undergrowth that blanketed the rim of the Giant’s Footprint.I hesitated for a moment before stepping out into the open, of course, because it was crucial that this first meeting go well. He only spotted me when I had almost reached the bench.“Goddag,” I said, that formal little word all Danes know and attach no deep emotional significance whatsoever to. I think we’re the only people in the world who use a greeting that sounds so flat and reticent, and which signals both apprehension and reserve, short as it is. He flinched almost imperceptibly, but made no reply. The only sound was the constant whispering of the wind in the trees in the Sea Witch’s forest. “My name’s Malin…” It was not a grand plan, exactly, but it was the only one I had, and I meant the information as an offer of friendship that I had not extended to anyone since I was little.

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He stayed sitting, motionless, on the stone bench, making no sign of getting up. Neither one of us held our hand out.That day, I wouldn’t have bet a penny on ever getting closer to him. He must have thought the encounter was random – and on that autumn day, less than three months before the Widow disappeared, that was the way it had to be. I obviously knew his name already, and I think, though I could not say why, that he sensed that somehow…… now – as back then – his name struck me as slightly comical: as though the two g’s in Viggo and the two s’s in Larssen gave the whole construction a peculiar ring: Viggo Larssen, 59 years old, haunted by demons,no one could help him with; recently escaped from a capsized existence in central Copenhagen to what seemed the end stop on his life journey. I sat down next to him on the bench.To be on the safe side I placed myself so far out on the stone bench, in the direction of Hell’s Deep, it would only take a middling gust of wind to push me over the edge.Even several feet away from him and without making eye contact, I could sense the loneliness that had always surrounded him; his eyes, which carried within them a sadness that touched me but that did not reveal any trace of regret.A book lay on the bench on his left, near me, and that was what I had spotted when I had decided to come out of hiding.

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Viggo Larssen had been reading it before slowly, carefully putting it down on the stone bench, almost as though it were made of some material that would crumble at the slightest touch. It was no bigger than my old school notebooks, and it was the first time he had done anything while sitting on the bench, other than staring into thin air or up at the sky or drinking a glass of wine. The cover was green and now – from up close – I was almost sure it was leather. The binding was beautiful, worn with age and dappled in lighter and darker shades, as though it had protected the pages within from the damp world for hundreds of years.

The Commissioner’s Office- Friday 2 January, morningThe Commissioner turned to his second-in-command, and the two men looked as though they were waiting to hear a word that had not yet been spoken, but that hung in the air somewhere above them and could, perhaps – if interpreted correctly – solve the riddle facing them.They had switched their iPhones to silent for a moment, and when they turned the sound back on, the insistent stream of urgent calls made one long beep that could mean only one thing: they were up to their necks in the most difficult case of their lives.That the nation’s Grand Old Lady could vanish for as long as an hour was remarkable, two hours was shocking, and more than twelve was properly outrageous.

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“Nothing… conclusive.”Number Two shook his head. The forensic technicians had learnt nothing from their study of the old folder. Which had been rather expected.And yet.Stuck to the inside of the cover, they had found a small post-it with a date and a year written on it. It lay in a transparent bag on the desk in front of the Commissioner – completely plain and as of yet, unexplained. “But why would anyone…” The Commissioner faltered and stared at the one handwritten line on the note.Number Two had no difficulty deducing the end of the statement, but kept mum.“So, the will is missing… and instead we have a post-it with a date and a year, which…”“… doesn’t make sense.” This time Number Two finished his superior’s thought.“A date that’s…”“… more than four decades old, even though the analysis showed that…”“… it was written fairly recently… with a blue biro.”The last phrase hung in the air.The Commissioner held up the strange find to the light, as though physical proximity – and the first light of the sun – would give him answers.“Why would anyone write some ancient date down and put it there – in her folder?” he said.

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Then he continued even more tentatively: “So there is something weird about it…” – before faltering once more, as though the slightly peculiar word – at least coming from him – effectively blocked the thought he had been formulating. “Well, perhaps all people are weird,” offered Number Two, who had noticed the uncharacteristic hesitation of the man he admired completely uncritically. “We’re born weird… and we die weird.”The point was more philosophical than anything the Commissioner had ever heard this down-to-earth man utter. He shot him a curious glance and replied: “If we’re all weird, that must be normal, but I reckon, unfortunately… and I can feel it… that there’s something about this case we’ve never encountered before. That’s how I see it. We don’t know the half of it yet. Maybe we know nothing at all.”His second-in-command made no reply, which said it all.It was exactly how he saw it, too.

Chapter 3Søborg near Copenhagen- 1955-1960Viggo Larssen was not a normal child – or maybe he was exactly that, I’ve often thought since.Perhaps my response to all his peculiarities, his tics, his strange movements and strange sounds, his need to explore even the darkest recesses of a mind that was not made for such exploration, were shaped by the

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fact that I recognised him deep inside myself. That I had grown up with the same tendency to pervert all the things that should have been beautiful and normal; terrified of exposing myself and with the child’s intense need to live invisibly, especially when everything around me fell apart and strangeness sloshed out uncontrollably from every nook and cranny of my body.Teis would have said that it was all genetics. Defective mechanisms, poor biological connectors, genome ribbons suspended from some string of DNA that was misreplicated back when life was made…… but, Teis, maybe there are more of us than you would ever guess, and maybe all children grow up with secrets concealed by the Devil and God and Science, so maybe your rationalisations are nothing but the bizarre solace invented to satisfy all-powerful Reason. Reason’s own taskforce, as it were. A kind of square hat, placed over reality so that we never have to see the bulging snake that has devoured the elephant, or something even worse. I only know that investigating his life in the days after the Widow’s disappearance gave me some insight into the dark room where he had been hiding and living among all his secrets, ever since he was a child. Viggo Larssen was born in Copenhagen to a single mother; his father had resolutely washed his hands of the child and gone back to Sweden, whence he came. “Beyond the mountains,” as the maternity charity in Copenhagen put it, in an era when every year thousands of faithless fathers abandoned their children before they were even born.

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In this case, however, it was literally true, because Viggo Larssen’s biological progenitor fled all the way up to the Kebnekaise massif in Lapland, where the Swedish authorities had nevertheless tracked him down and taken a blood sample that tied him to the unwanted offspring he had left behind in Denmark. They obliged him to pay child maintenance once a month, and that was the sum total of what Viggo Larssen knew about his father. This was a time when single mothers bowed their heads in shame at having borne a bastard – as it was unflatteringly known – outside of wedlock; maybe that was why his mother eventually gave Viggo the book about the little boy who had neither father nor mother, yet ruled an entire planet of his own. The Little Prince.When things were at their worst, Viggo’s mother’s recently retired parents chose to give up their comfortable existence in the fjord village of Vejle and move to the big city, to Copenhagen. Viggo’s grandfather’s two brothers already lived there; that was the official explanation for the relocation. They bought a terraced house in Søborg, big enough for their daughter and her son to live in, too. The row of terraced houses was located in a suburb that was considered part of the vanguard of the nascent welfare society of the 1960s: the state built nurseries, schools, stables, sports clubs, tower blocks, television transmitters – and even a huge outdoor swimming pool, where a few years later, on sunny Sundays, you could spot the members of the most popular rock group of that time, Savage Rose, sunbathing next to the big pool, near the ten-metre platform that no one dared to jump from.

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In Viggo’s neighbourhood, the grownups spent their weekends in their gardens, cutting grass, laying tile, growing tulips, preparing rose beds , planting crocuses, pruning rhododendrons and sowing potatoes and parsley in straight lines, flanked by currant bushes, strawberries, gooseberries and apple, pear and plum trees – anything the new, slightly inexperienced gardeners could keep alive, with the aid of significant quantities of DDT and fertilisers, because this was before environmentalists got upset about those things. Generally speaking, the amount of flowers and bushes and trees – and pesticides – you could squeeze into a narrow, rectangular garden, was insane, and equally insane was the way neighbours would peer across the low, newly planted hedges at the horticultural bounty of their rival gardeners.“I’d love for the grass to be really green this year,” Viggo’s grandfather would say, and you could tell he did not quite believe it, because he was born a sceptic, some would go so far as to say choleric. Among the neighbours, he was known as a moody man, who at best nodded but rarely spoke.Viggo Larssen seemed like a relatively normal boy until he was about three or four. There were no little signs that betrayed the character flaws that would later afflict him. Well, sure, at three he still drank his milk with his lips pressed against the top edge of his mug – he had this little silver cup with his initials engraved on the handle – which obviously meant the whole lot ended up in his lap. On the other hand this was so comical that the heartfelt laughter of the people around him masked what was potentially genuinely disturbing behaviour. Sometimes I think – as

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did Teis Hanson when the letter arrived – that the tricycle accident was the pivotal moment – or that it at least revealed a side of the boy no one had seen before. It was one of those insignificant events that could have easily never happened. It seems to me that people’s lives have both a real and a fantastical component. The first is tangible while the other is invisible, at least at first. A boy like Viggo struggled to fit in and seem outwardly normal, but inside he was full of strange and unspeakable thoughts and notions, and they came and went as they pleased. Instinctively, he knew that he must not let them out and definitely not put them into words, so he pushed them back inside, inwards and downwards, deep down into the darkness of that bottomless abyss (which believers call the soul), from which the odd visions and dreams could not break out.Except that they could, and, of course, did.In Viggo’s case, they erupted in the form of odd facial tics, involuntary tossing of the head and protracted neck pains, confused blinking, first with one eye, then with the other, and finally a sobbing sound from deep in his throat, that made people turn to see if someone was standing behind them, laughing.He would often sit motionless, staring at his wrist, and no grownup could figure out why. He had overheard a mother at this nursery, talking about her son who had died of acute septicaemia from a small, almost invisible scratch on his hand. This made Viggo terrified of even the smallest cuts and scrapes, terrified of death, though none of the grownups around him noticed. He was in no doubt: one day he would see that red streak shooting up past his wrist and along his arm, towards

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his shoulder and chest, while underneath, the fatal poisoning set its course for his heart…… if anyone had seen him sitting there and asked him: “What’s the matter…?” – they would have had no reply. Children do not let grownups into that world, since grownups cannot understand it anyway. They know intuitively that it would only lead to bad things for them: questions, then annoyance – and finally anger.That is why countless children like Viggo grow up with thoughts and eccentricities they have never revealed to anybody. On the surface: the innocent, childish. Just underneath: the deformed seeds that grow in the dark and bloom into visions that can never be shared. We carry them with us throughout our lives, children and grownups, the old and the dying, everyone has that knowledge inside them, like that picture of the hat that hides a snake, which may in fact be an elephant.My foster mother would have picked the last form.

*

The story of Viggo is, therefore, not an easy one to tell. I simply do not have a map of all the recesses in which he stored his secrets, and even though I have had some practice observing boys like him – and looking inwards and downwards, down into the abyss – he was uniquely strange. If he reminded me of anyone, and I would never share this assessment with a living soul, it would be me. My own story is not important. I grew up without parents and only entered life very late – as they put it back

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then – when I left the orphanage in Skodsborg north of Copenhagen, where I had spent my entire childhood and youth as the foster daughter of the woman who managed the orphanage, among the young women who looked after the parentless children.Viggo Larssen had spent the first few months of his life there, but that was several years before my time. The first time I met him was in the cemetery in Søborg – when he was 15 – right after his life capsized – the way I see it. My foster mother was towering over me, standing between the headstones. To her mind, what Viggo went through that day was hardly life destroying. People die, and the only important thing was that there was one repairman less in the world. Only when she herself passed away did I leave the nest (as this less than straightforward process is known to those fortunate enough to have had a home), wrote my new name on one of the christening forms my foster mother always had lying around, and took a job as a night nurse at a retirement home in one of the poshest parts of town. I was the best they had ever had. Looking after old people is like venturing back to the beginning of life, and for years I lived inconspicuously, almost invisibly in a small flat in the home’s basement. When I moved to the cape, the light and wind and vast sea out by the Lighthouse almost blew my mind. I had not seen Viggo Larssen for decades, but I do not think a week or month had passed when I had not thought about him. Maybe because he reminded me of my own past – and because we shared a special ability: when the cruelties of life became overwhelming, I yanked at the tiller, soared away from this mortal coil and set up camp on some small, obscure planet from which I

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could observe the grownups and mortals down there in their pretty gardens, from a safe distance. Both staff and visitors could stand there in the shadow of the orphanage, shouting at the small child that seemed present and aware – and should be answering them – but the child was invisible and unreachable, because that was how we protected ourselves.There he stood, Viggo Larssen, the son of a single mother, at the top of the stone steps that led from the front door down into the small front garden, with his rounded, watchful shoulder pushed forward slightly, as though he were expecting a sudden blow or shove from an unseen adversary who would come whirling down from the heavens, lightning in hand, and knock him down.I recognised that watchful stare; I could see his gaze hovering in the air before him, darting round the corner, over the low garden hedges, in and out doors and behind parked cars; was someone lurking there, was someone watching him when he left the visible world and did things that even hardened adventurers would shake their heads at?No, but that day – it was the spring of ’59 – a tricycle was parked up there, next to the front door. He was three and half years old, and it has often occurred to me that if he had not noticed it – just at that moment – and had he not climbed on with that look in his eyes I knew so well, then everything that followed would have remained an evil, but never realised plan in the incomparably imaginative mind of a demon…… even before the crash, the tricycle bore the signs of what back then used to be called a healthy boy’s use – to put it mildly – with scratches in the paint, crooked

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handlebars and a tattered saddle. It was blood red and had a dump bin behind the seat, which on this morning contained one of his Donald Duck comics.Maybe he heard a voice inside his head, calling: “You’re too scared to do it… you’re too scared to do it…!” Or maybe it was actually Agnes, who – in the real world – shouted this cruel jibe from where she stood in the next garden over, hidden behind a hedge, as Teis would later claim: “She wanted his Donald Duck – the one where the Duck family travel to the Valley of Mist in search of the square eggs of Peru.”He had been standing in the street when it happened, and he had heard a voice egging Viggo on that morning – a girl’s voice – he had been willing to swear it, all those years later.When, seconds later, Viggo Larssen rode the few inches to the edge of the top step of the long stairs, his resolve was harder than the concrete underneath the wheels of his trike; he would not stop, not for anything. It was this defiance, mixed with a fear of being defiant, that sometimes scared the other children. Squinting with one eye closed, Viggo measured the distance to the tiles at the foot of the stairs – it looked a little as though he were aiming down the barrel of a rifle. Then he pushed off with his bare little legs and the trike and the boy on it tipped forward and clattered down and down and down… and everyone closed their eyes… and then opened them again… like children do… because they have to see what happens next…… Miraculously, the Donald Duck comic had stayed in the dump bin, trapped in a fold in the crumpled up iron. Viggo had very obviously hit his head, because he lay stock-still on the tiles beneath the stairs, with both

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eyes open. Were it not for the tears, you would have thought he was dead. The broken tricycle lay on its side with one pedal askew and the little white dump bin pushed halfway up towards the saddle. It stuck out at a grotesque angle looking like nothing so much as a bone torn from a human body. At that moment, she stepped out of the shadows. Agnes, the only girl he occasionally played with. She had stood not three feet away, on the other side of the hedge.As a child, she was always teased because her surname was Persen rather than Pedersen or Petersen like everyone else’s, and when she started first grade in Søborg Primary, you would often hear the gibes ringing out across the schoolyard: “Little Persen! Little Persen! Little Persen!” It was a crushing putdown. Viggo Larssen lay on his back without moving a muscle. I think he closed his eyes for a brief moment, and when he opened them again, she was gone. And so was the Donald Duck.Then the front door at the top of the steps flew open and his grandparents dashed out to rescue the semi-unconscious boy. There was blood on the grey garden tiles; Viggo’s grandmother dabbed at the back of his head with a wet rag. The ambulance sirens could be heard from afar, that ominous sound of death and fear. The neighbours stood in the front gardens of their little terraced houses, bathed in blue, flashing light. There had never been an ambulance in their street before.Later, when they came back from the hospital and Viggo had been put to bed (his head was wrapped in

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snow white bandages), the three grownups sat in the living room and talked the strange event over.It was obvious no one had pushed their little boy; he must simply have accidentally ridden his tricycle too close to the edge. It was simply unthinkable that he would have done something so outlandish deliberatelyHis mother’s eyes shone with concern. She and Viggo shared two rooms on the second floor of the terraced house. She slept on a sofa bed and Viggo had his own room with a bookshelf, a desk and a bed – as well as a view of The Yellow House on Maglegård Allé at the far end of their backyard, where a small family with three sons had recently moved in. Viggo’s mother was a handsome, fairly short woman. She had a somewhat nervous disposition and was often preoccupied with her own thoughts and the various problems at the office on Amaliegade where she worked as a secretary. As usual when her son needed consoling, she pulled out a storybook and kissed him on his white bandages and read to him, before turning the lights off. She loved the tale of The Ugly Duckling, who turned into a swan, and in the soft light of the bedside lamp, she failed to notice that her son pressed his eyes shut, as though trying to block the images evoked by the feel-good story of the bird’s miraculous transformation. (I think Viggo instinctively knew that that kind of metamorphosis does not happen in real life, and, consequently, that the image of the proud cygnet swimming after his new family on the last page of the book was a lie. Something the grownups had made up).“Why would he do something like that?” Viggo’s grandmother asked later that evening; Viggo could hear her voice in the dark, through the floor, because

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the two elderly people talked louder and louder as they grew older.“It’s because he’s an idiot,” replied his grandfather, who had been a district manager in the Danish Heath Society and had walked far and wide in his tall wellies, through heather and across meadows, back when Western Jutland was bare and uncultivated.His wife of thirty years peered at him without responding. Perhaps she really did accept his assessment as the only possible explanation – and thus as an excuse for her husband’s callousness. Grownups judge and absolve each other thus, even in a situation where someone ought to have asked the only logical question: Why?They were already aware that night that Viggo had done it deliberately… I have seen it so many times before. That evasion, when grownups sense something violent – and weird – which ultimately risks reflecting back on them. When I gained some insight into Viggo’s story, I should have told him that this type of grownup cold-heartedness affects more children than he could imagine. And I would have told him that all those children carry it with them throughout their lives, so that when they themselves have children, it is preserved (intact) and can be aimed at them in turn. But of course I actually said nothing at all until it was too late.The first of the strange visions came to him in the weeks after the crash, after his mum had turned off the lights.When he closed his eyes, his inner world was lit up by suns, stars and flickering comets with blue and red

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halos that blazed like fire and made him think of the blind children he had once seen in the playground by Vengede Station. It was the first and only time he told anyone about his fear of blindness and the dark. The doctor had patted him on the head (Viggo had only just had his bandages removed) and reassured his mother and grandmother; it was just a kind of snow blindness that happened when the lights were switched off, he said – and the grownups nodded knowingly, solemnly at one another: yes, well, snow blindness – and on a night with pouring rain, no less. How extraordinary…… he heard his grandmother’s voice floating up from the downstairs living room where they were having their evening coffee: “So luckily there’s nothing at all to worry about…”… he stared up into the darkness, up into the flashes of fire, where someone regularly replaced one dazzlingly colourful comet with the next. They had left him alone with his fear.He told them it had stopped happening, like the doctor had said it would. He lay in the dark and tried to sleep, but he knew he could wake up blind any minute, and he was unable to overcome his fear. He opened his eyes and peered at the outline of light from the window to make sure he could still see. His eyes were red from sleep deprivation and his mother yelled at him and placed a black cloth over his face. He said nothing……but he found a crack to peep out through; the outline of the window was his only stable point of reference during those months. I don’t think he changed so dramatically because he hit his head, or because something had been knocked loose inside his skull –

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that day on the stairs – but because he learnt that he must never tell anyone about things that were not normal. Instead he blinked furiously, first with his left eye, then with his right and lastly he made a sobbing sound that sounded like a laugh, and his mother’s eyes went dark and teary. His grandmother inhaled deeply and held her breath for fifteen-twenty seconds before letting the air out. The protracted silence no doubt gave her enough time to send up a wordless prayer to the Lord…… Just then his grandfather let loose a pent-up roar: “What’s in God’s name is wrong with the boy now?!”Everyone knew it. In the real world, the strangest and ugliest never have happy endings – that only happens in fairy tales.Maybe that is why grownups read them aloud, over and over again.

*

The Prime Minister’s Office- Sunday 4 January, morningThe Bear buried his head in his hands. It felt as though two hammers had dealt juddering blows his temples…… one on each side.The seven-pound body part seemed to throb with equal parts powerlessness and uncontrollable rage; someone had taken his mother – away from him – away from him and his brother.

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Someone had challenged the absolute authority of the Blegman Dynasty.Never before had anyone been so bold. The exclamations rose once more in giant speech bubbles that were invisible to the people who sat across from him, but which floated away beyond the horizon before the picture abruptly changed.The Prime Minister jumped out of his chair and pointed to his younger brother, the Justice Minister (a gesture he otherwise considered an irrefutable sign of weakness) and shouted: “You have to uncover the motive behind this abduction… What the fuck is the motive?!”The Prime Minister’s brother stared at the extended finger and answered with something akin to resignation in his voice: “If there even is a motive – that makes any kind of sense.”“There is… I can feel it. Someone has thought… long and hard… about this. For fuck’s sake, she couldn’t just have… someone took her – someone…” He faltered mid-hypothesis and lowered his outstretched right arm. Stood there with clenched fists, staring at the Cabinet Secretary, who was the third person in the room. He was a tall, blond man, who was said to have a past as a biker in the outer suburb of Hørsholm with hair halfway to his waist, before he became a member of a revolutionary political party; but that was a long time ago, and now the two brothers had drawn him into their tribulations. The tone of the Bear’s outburst had plainly demonstrated that the past few months had not increased his level of affection for the old widow – but

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then of course his brother already knew as much and the nation’s most senior civil servant was sworn to silence. “What are you saying?”The Cabinet Secretary, who was standing square in front of the desk in his impeccable slate grey suit (it was said that he had once worn a green army jacket with bullet holes in it from the Vietnam War), let the question hang in the air between them for a few seconds, before replying:“I’ve been approached – by… it doesn’t matter who by… by someone claiming the Commissioner has his officers… digging around…”“Digging around what… what… what, damn it?” The Bear, who had been about to sit down, was back on his feet and looked about ready to punch someone. “”The Widow Blegman’s closest family. That is to say… well… as far back as they can go. Everything…”They could almost sense the small smirk lurking under that last statement, but on the other hand that seemed unthinkable, even for a man who had once protested against Chile’s junta at a tennis tournament in Båstad and been a member of the Executive Committee of Denmark’s Left Socialists. The two brothers exchanged looks. The Justice Minister had got to his feet as well, and even though he was several inches shorter than his brother he was still a formidable specimen of a man. Until now, the police had focused on their youth in the local area around Smakkegård Street in Gentofte in their search for a – potential – motive from the family’s past. The brothers were well aware of that, and neither one of them had made any attempt to

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redirect their efforts. It was part of the process and had to be done; every obstacle – this close to a general election, which had to be held before the end of May – could be disastrous.But their earliest childhood was a different story altogether; naturally, the same thought struck both brothers at once. The thought of the yellow house in Søborg, back when they were just two lanky boys with a penchant for chasing and terrorising the upwardly mobile children in the red terraces on the next street over.They thought about their younger brother who had died – and about all the things that happened in the years that followed. About their father, the tyrant, about the yellow raincoat their mother had taken off her dead youngest son. And about the rage. The things that no one would ever find out, unless a very skilled investigator felt particularly lucky one day – and actually was, too.If that happened, they could kiss re-election goodbye. Their problems were already considerable. Their mother had vanished at the worst possible time, just before the reconciliation she herself had invited them to.They were both thinking about the same thing, and it was not their mother; it certainly was not her. They were thinking about what they had counted on her holding in her hands when they arrived at Solbygaard on the first day of the new year. A folder, which they knew ever so well. It had once belonged to their father.

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The Blegman will. Their mother’s final testament. They had both counted on that meeting solving all their problems.

The Office of the Chief of Homicide- Sunday 4 January, afternoonThe two pieces of yellow plastic lay on the rosewood desk between them.Number Two had taken them out of the two bags the technicians had used to store their finds.“An old raincoat…?”The Chief of Homicide looked at his second-in-command. The word – and the question mark – had been delivered as flatly as they were supposed to, and yet something was not normal here – even for this office, which had seen some of the most bizarre deeds God’s creatures could unleash on one another.He said it again: “A… raincoat?”“Yes – that’s what the analysis showed. The two pieces we have here are supposedly a couple of decades old… possibly even older. The splotches are blood.”“But why…?” The Commissioner fell silent and leaned forward. He touched one of the bits of plastic with a long index finger – almost as though he were trying to coax an answer from the limp pieces of cloth.He may have been the best interrogator in the country – whether the suspect in question was guilty or innocent – but squeezing a confession or anything even remotely similar out of this particular subject was beyond him. “Why leave them lying around – under a

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pillow and on a windowsill?” he asked and straightened up.“One of the nursing staff claims to have seen them before – in one of the Widow’s drawers – but she’s not sure. They’re very busy. The old people are supposed to be self-reliant, you know.”The Commissioner was well aware of the meaning of the euphemistic term self-reliant – it derived from Biblical times, from when Jesus decided to try to rationalise his short-lived Earthly rescue expedition.Heal yourselves! As he has been quoted as saying in a certain rock opera. Out loud he said: “So she must have brought it with her there – or someone could have left it – but what on Earth does it mean, either way?”Number Two changed the subject; the two men did not need any further words to admit their helplessness regarding the pieces of yellow plastic.“The technicians are still working on…” – now he was the one hesitating – “… the samples from the other… artefact.”They both knew which one he meant.“But there’s probably no simple explanation?”No reply was necessary. A yellow scrap of paper with an old date scribbled on it was not a simple kind of clue.“The brothers are obviously furious about our lack of… progress. And our press people are completely inundated,” Number Two added.

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“Well, it hardly takes a rocket scientist to figure that out…” – it was unusual for the Commissioner to cut his second-in-command off in that tone – “… but is there any new information about the explanation they’ve given us – about whether there was a reason for why they were visiting at that exact time?”“No. They maintain it was a simple New Year’s visit. There is nothing alarming or unusual about that.”“But…?” The Chief of Homicide had no difficulty reading his right-hand man.“But… well… the priest – Agnes… something or the other – confirms that they had been invited. But…” Number Two faltered.“Yes…?”“She also claims that the invitation was out of the ordinary. They were not frequent visitors, and Old Lady Blegman had never invited them before.”The Commissioner dropped the small piece of plastic onto the desk and leaned back in his chair. “Is that so?”Number Two made no reply. Almost a minute passed. Neither one of them could tell whether the priest’s information was significant.“Is there any news about… the examination… of their past? About the widow’s…? Anything, there…?” Never before had the two otherwise exceedingly decisive investigators fallen involuntarily silent so many times in such a short space of time, and Number Two still felt no need to reply. The answer was self-evident.Then he shook his head.

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They had nothing to go on.

Søborg near Copenhagen- 1961-62Viggo’s mother was a beautiful woman in her way, even though the sedentary life of a secretary at a British oil company on Amaliegade in Copenhagen had made her slightly plumper over the years. She wore high heels to work, but back then they were not nearly as high as they are today nor as thin – because a single mother had to be careful not to send any inappropriate signals to the married men around her. I have never worn anything but flats myself – wellies and trainers (my feet gave me a lot of trouble as a child) – and I’m not the kind of person who enjoys changing my habits or appearing vain in any way.When Viggo was younger, she sent him to summer camp in Odsherred every year, probably because she had a strong desire to be herself for just a couple of weeks a year.Viggo hated being away, and he dreaded summers at the camp by Sejerø Bay with an intensity no one around him noticed. A boy like Viggo was much more given to homesickness than you would have thought – other children would have loved a few weeks by the sea – and his mother seemed to relish his absence. She had her fillings replaced at the dentist on Søborg Main Street (she saved up all year and always broke down in tears when the bill came) and with no chores to get on with, she had time to listen to her Mozart, Beethoven and Bach records and to sleep late. She even went to Dyrehaven with an admirer or two, though she never

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brought them home with her, and one Saturday she accepted an invitation to go to the movies with a young clerk in her office, who seemed to have no objection to single mothers – but she contented herself with just one drink after the film before parting ways. She was an honourable woman.On the day Viggo was to leave for camp, she took her son to Emdrup Plads, where the children were herded onto two large coaches from Odsherred Coach Travel and driven north towards the glorious forests and white sandy beaches that to children from the suburbs between Bispebjerg and Vangede could normally only dream about……the female instructors on the bus had the children singing wholesome songs like Altid frejdig and Morgenstund har guld i mund as they rounded the forest of Hareskoven and sped away to the northwest. Viggo sat in the far back next to Agnes, the neighbour girl, and squeezed the Gonk troll with the bushy, tangled red hair that he loved so dearly. His fingers were red and his joints ached from clinging to the railing by the stairs in front of the terraced house in a last-ditch attempt to prevent his departure.It took three adults to wrench his clenched fingers from the bars; in the end, his grandfather came outside and bent his fingers back, one after the other, until his grandmother could get a good grip and remove the whole hand.His mother cried while he struggled, but she knew it was all in the boy’s best interest; so said the ladies at the nursery and so said the childrearing experts. Nature and fresh air and the beach was a healthy

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break from his single mother’s safe but slightly confining, suffocating embrace. Even so, Viggo screamed at the last moment and shouted: “No, No, No…!”And he heard his grandfather hiss: “What a little idiot…!”Then he was deposited into the child bike seat, where he collapsed, defeated, so that his mother had to hold him up by his jacket all the way to Emdrup Plads.Viggo hated the red camp barracks in Ellinge Lyng with a passion that only a small boy’s heart can muster (it is a kind of hatred never dies and never diminishes and that can be prompted by something as innocuous as a smell or a sound, by cut grass or the a wind in the fir trees, even fifty years later).The six wooden barracks, which were to house the approximately one hundred lucky Copenhagen children, lay, as mentioned, by the shore of Sejerø Bay, and Miss Salomonsen and Miss Thorsaager practically danced across the light green grass, unlocking the doors to the dorms, opening the windows to let in fresh air, mixing squash and cooking hotdogs, which they set out on long, rickety tables, while the children played on old tyre swings and tested the seesaws and beamed like the warm morning sun which soared high above them.Viggo hated it all and the staff hated the little boy with the big ears for his obvious distress and the look of agony on his face. Viggo hated the taste of fresh squash and overcooked hotdogs, the staff hated the way he picked at their welcome meal before turning his back on it and walking off in the direction of the

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forest. I don’t think those well-meaning ladies ever really noticed that Viggo was absent, and that his homesickness was worlds apart from the one they were familiar with. Their only concern was to distribute their well-meaning in the only way they knew how, which is to say through squash, hotdogs, singing and visits to the beach; because those things were life itself, were goodness and wholesomeness, and what child could reject that?Viggo stood alone at point where the camp grounds met the dark forest.

*

(From Chapter Søborg near Copenhagen 1963, page 125)It was 23 August 1963, just under a month before Viggo Larssen’s eighth birthday; it was a date none of the families in the neighbourhood around Maglegård Allé would ever forget.A few days earlier, his grandfather had borrowed his brother’s car after driving him and his wife to the airport, from where they were flying to Mallorca with the priest from Tjæreborg.His younger brother had both the time and the money to indulge in that kind of luxury, having secured a generous pension from FL Smidth, where he had ended his career as Vice President with a very respectable salary.He had also, at that point, taken over the company car, a gorgeous blue Opel Kapitän, the kind of car Viggo’s

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grandfather could only dream of owning – and once in a blue moon borrowing. On this particular day, he had had an errand to run in town – which was highly unusual – but Viggo had seen his grandfather’s eyes sparkle as he climbed into the glossy vehicle that morning. He would have liked to go with him, and he had pleadingly tugged at his grandfather’s sleeve, but just then, Viggo’s grandmother had called him inside and told him to do his homework.Later on, they were able to piece together every stage of the drive – the police had mapped it in detail; Viggo’s grandfather had taken Frederiksborgsvejen into town and past Tivoli, turning back westwards past the Radio House on Rosenørns Allé, then right, down H.C. Ørsteds Vej and left along the Åboulevard, making his way back home. He passed the Bellahøj buildings and three minutes later turned onto Horsebakken before reaching the final, fatal stretch of Maglegårds Allé, also known as Death Road.There had been a light shower or two earlier in the day, so it could be that the road was ever so slightly slippery, even if you could not see it, so no one had cause to blame the old man for what happened.Viggo’s grandfather sped up a little as the road began to climb, just before the bend with the small shop and the terraces on the right and the grand old villas on the left, but not enough to – contrary to subsequent allegations – broke the speed limit. Three hundred feet from the bend, and backing onto Viggo Larssen’s backyard, there was, as mentioned, a yellow house, in which the three Blegman brothers

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lived with their parents. If there had been any witnesses out on the pavement at the moment when the car approached, they may have heard the sound of a front door slamming shut and glimpsed a movement in the garden in front of The Yellow House…… an attentive person would perhaps have noticed that the garden gate was open – which it normally never was – and a considerate passer-by concerned with the safety of young children would have made sure to close it. But there was not a soul to be seen – no one around to hear the calling of a saviour from on high – had there been such.The boy, who went by the name of Pil, may have started running even before he reached the bottom of the steps leading down from the front door, because once he reached the open lawn it was at high speed and with a small blue ball dancing on the toes of his moss green wellies, which would later be recovered from the road almost sixty feet from the crash site.It was impossible for the blue Opel to stop in time – as the police would later confirm. Viggo’s grandfather was driving within the speed limit, the visibility was adequate, only the little boy’s dash after the ball, out past the curb, was impossible to account for.In that exact moment, Viggo had been filling the birdbath that Chicken Little the First and the Duck had used to enjoy splashing around in. His grandmother had decided to get rid of the old birdcage and buy a new one. Perhaps she was worried about death clinging to the shiny bars somehow and pictured Chicken Little the First drooling and helpless on the cage floor. The new Chicken Little would be the first bird of a brand new era, which would put the bad

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memories firmly behind them, and now Viggo was busy setting up the new cage and making everything as comfortable as possible for its new residents.He heard the screaming brakes; he heard something that sounded like a muffled thud and a scream, or maybe it was the plaintive sound of tyres skidding across asphalt.He heard his grandmother emit a loud shriek – and then order him to stay inside. But his curiosity got the better of him. He threw open the back door and ran down the path toward Maglegård Allé and The Yellow House.He remembered the sight that greeted him. I was almost like with the raven and the canary.A small, yellow bundle lay under a low, dark, enormous shadow, which well-nigh engulfed the yellow, which was quickly turning a different colour altogether, one no amount of rinsing would ever get out. Viggo knew instantly that it was blood. His grandmother stood in the street, staring at the child and the car, which had mounted the curb in a vain evasive manoeuvre. The little boy in the yellow jacket lay halfway under the front bumper. That sight changed Viggo’s life; that image changed everything; the outline of the dead boy’s body left an indelible mark on his inner world. The yellow, the black, the shiny, the asphalt, the hood of the car – the damp that was rising through the air – the seeping redness that slowly swallowed the yellow, the boy’s strangely peaceful eyes that looked as though the pain had not reached them before it was already too late.

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He reached his grandmother and pulled her into the front garden of The Yellow House. He was horrified to see the car door swing open and his grandfather practically falling out across the sidestep and into the road. He watched him crawl on his hands and knees to the front end of the car, pull the tiny yellow bundle free of the bumper and lift it into an embrace.His grandfather just sat there with a little boy in his arms.Then there was a loud cry from the garden of The Yellow House, and the unambiguous sound of the front door being thrown wide open, crashing against the railing of the stairs with a metallic ring. A large man came running out, with the two almost equally large bullies that were his sons fast on his heels. Palle, Poul lunged as one at Viggo’s grandfather, trying to separate him from the dead boy, their youngest brother Pil. Their father brutally kicked the old man into the gutter, wresting the little yellow body from his arms.At that point, Viggo’s ears already caught the sound of sirens. Someone had called the ambulance that would be arriving soon, yet not soon enough. Mrs Blegman was standing just inside the gate, screaming. He could see Teis, cowering behind a gate across the street.His grandfather sat in the gutter with his head in his hands; Palle and Poul were boy-sized next to the larger, grownup version next to them, but broad-backed and ham-fisted nonetheless. It was a miracle they left the old man alone.

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His grandfather never said the obvious thing: It wasn’t my fault – the boy ran out right in front of the car – not then on Maglegårds Allé and not ever afterwards. Nor did he tell the police officers what was plain as day: He ran out in front of the car.On the contrary:“It was my fault… oh, it was my fault… I should have been faster…”And then an unfathomable despair, which Viggo found strangely embarrassing, even as the police officers attempted to console him, robbed his grandfather of his voice. Viggo had never seen his grandfather so small before, had never seen him bend to anyone or anything; years later he remembered his own reaction as much worse and much more violent than anything he had since experienced.Like rage, rising up within him, until it exploded somewhere inside his head and turned into a milky mist that blinded him for almost a full minute.He only came to his senses when his grandmother touched his arm and pulled him in behind their own garden gate. To safety.

*

He watched his grandmother wrap her arms around her husband, then he got to his feet and ran into the house, out through the front door, down the street and around the corner by the garages. He did not stop until he reached the creek. He stared down into the stream

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and could not stop wondering whether it was his fault that his grandfather was suffering so unbearably. The old man’s feelings for the dead boy were stronger and deeper than anything Viggo had seen before.His own role in these events was perfectly clear to Viggo. Just before his grandfather had got into the car he had borrowed from his brother, Viggo had run over and grabbed the sleeve of his jacket in the hopes of being allowed to come along – or at least that his grandfather would blow his horn as he turned out of the driveway – like all the other boys’ fathers did every morning. That one little gesture, born of unadulterated conceit – he had wanted to show the others that his family had a car too – had changed everything; without that tiny delay, everything would have been different, because that is all it takes to change the world and throw all the planets off course. That one second of hesitation had been enough to cause the catastrophe two hours later on Death Road. That was the second that made it possible for Pil to make it across the pavement and into the street before the car with Viggo’s grandfather in it had driven past; that was the second that should not have existed, which closed the gap between the boy and the car…… to some other child, or to a rational adult, an innocent act hours before an accident would not have been enough to provoke any kind of regret, let alone guilt, but for Viggo it marked the beginning of chain of events that could have been pushed forward or backward in time, just a fraction, if only he had acted ever so slightly differently.

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