Hell Fire Page 21

  Woiciech went straight to the police station. He had nothing else to do; he had the time. He asked to speak to Sejer and was shown into a bright office, where he was greeted by Frank.

  “I’ve got something to report,” he said shyly. “I’m working up at the church, painting the fence. People come and look at the graves. Of those two, I mean. And today a man came.”

  “And he drew your attention?” Sejer said. “That’s why you’re here. What did you see?”

  “He was big. Tall and solid. He stood there for a long time, and I sat in the car and watched.”

  “Did he realize he was being watched?”

  “I don’t think he noticed.”

  “And what about his age? How old do you think he was?”

  “Under thirty. No gray hair. Black top and boots. I thought it was strange to be wearing boots in this heat. His car was parked beside mine. I waited. Then he drove slowly off down the avenue.”

  “In other words, you got a good look at the car, close up,” Sejer said. “This could be very important to us.”

  “Yes,” Woiciech agreed. “The car was similar to the one I saw up by the farm. I had a close look before he came back.”

  Sejer nodded. He couldn’t keep his hands still. He opened and folded them, and drummed his fingers on the world map that was on the desk in front of him.

  “What kind of car was it, Woiciech?” he asked. Woiciech seemed to be pleased with himself.

  “An Opel Omega wagon,” he said. “Red.”

  Sejer knew that they would solve the case now. But he had known that all along. He felt neither joy nor triumph, just relief and satisfaction. He felt that it was something important, significant. For Henny and Henrik Hayden. For everyone who had been affected, for all the local community in Haugane. For the organization he was a part of, and for Bonnie and Simon. Woiciech got up and pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his green work pants. He tapped on some buttons and then put the phone down on the map, on Krakow.

  “Here,” he said. “I took the plate number.”

  Henny Hayden was quick, so she understood people. She picked up on details and nuances; she had intuition. And as soon as she saw the two detectives, she knew something significant had happened.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “We’ll soon find out,” Sejer replied.

  She showed them in. They told her about the car up at the church, that they had the plate number, that it was one of several red cars that had been seen in the area. And that via the plate number, they had found out who owned the car.

  Henrik was home, sitting by the window in a red-and-blue-striped dressing gown. When they came in, he turned to look at them with a tentative smile. Like a child who doesn’t know what the adults want. He was pale and thin and vulnerable. The silk dressing gown had opened slightly at the top to reveal his chest, which was covered in fine white hairs. He had been muscular when he was younger, but this had now turned to fat. A transparent tube, as thin as a thread, disappeared into his ear, indicating that he used a hearing aid.

  They sat down and then focused their attention on Henny.

  “Do you know the name Malthe?” Sejer asked. “Thomasine Malthe?”

  Henny looked at them, confused. She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. Malthe? No, it couldn’t be true.

  “We had expected it to be a man,” Sejer explained. “We couldn’t imagine that Bonnie and Simon had been killed by a woman. But perhaps Thomasine has a husband. Our witness saw a man up at the graveyard. He was relatively young, probably in his twenties.”

  Henny was still confused. She shook her head every now and then, as if what was happening seemed unreal, that they were on the wrong trail. But something that came from way back in the past broke over her like a storm.

  “Do you know Thomasine Malthe?” Sejer asked again.

  “No, not really.”

  “But you know who she is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there something that you’ve been keeping from us that you’d like to tell us now?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s got nothing to do with the case.”

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  “She has a son,” she said with trepidation.

  “A son?”

  “Yes, Thomasine Malthe has a son. He’s twenty-one.”

  “And do you know anything about this son?”

  “Yes, if it’s important.”

  “It is important.”

  “Should I have told you right away?”

  “Yes.”

  She couldn’t look at them anymore. She seemed to be disconsolate and ashamed, desperately trying to get out of the situation.

  “Tell us about Thomasine and her son.”

  She took a deep breath. “Bonnie had a boyfriend when she was fifteen. I think I’ve already told you about him. His name was Jørgen. We never got to meet him; she never brought him home because Henrik was so strict. He broke off their relationship after a few months and Bonnie was distraught. We couldn’t understand why she was taking it so badly. She wouldn’t have any trouble getting a new boyfriend because she was so pretty. She was more beautiful than any of the other girls. We thought it all very odd. Girls have boyfriends. I had five before I met Henrik.”

  “But she didn’t get a new boyfriend?”

  “No, and she didn’t try either. And a few weeks later, we realized why: he had gotten her pregnant. That was why he had broken it off; he didn’t want to have a child, the coward. We didn’t know how far gone she was.”

  “Did you contact Jørgen?” Skarre asked.

  “No, we didn’t even know his surname. She didn’t want us to know who he was. But she did want to have the child. It was almost as though she was doing it in defiance, maybe to punish him. And Henrik was furious that she wouldn’t tell us who he was. He swore that if he ever found out, he would wreak his revenge. Make mincemeat out of him, was what he said.”

  “But he never did?”

  “No.”

  “So Bonnie went to term. And how was that?”

  “It was embarrassing for us to have to tell the family that we didn’t know who the father was. As if there were several candidates, a line of them. To be honest, I was ashamed of Bonnie. She was no longer the daughter I knew; she was possessed. She ran around the house screaming and slamming doors. Buried herself in her bed, wouldn’t talk. Henrik was in shock, and we had no idea what the future held. Bonnie had so many plans. She wanted to study medicine. She wanted to work with geriatrics, and no one else wanted to do that.”

  “So she gave birth to a son?”

  “Yes. She was sixteen at the time. He was born prematurely and was in an incubator for a long time. Eventually we took him home. But then Bonnie didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to breastfeed him; she didn’t want to look after him. So I had to do everything. And then suddenly, sometime after the birth, she stopped eating. From one day to the next. Like a landslide. Henrik and I had our hands full and we quite simply gave up. It was the baby who had ruined everything and we didn’t want him either. So he was sent to a foster home, not far away. And we concentrated on saving Bonnie. She was under eighty-eight pounds by this stage. Later the little boy was formally adopted and given the surname Malthe. After Thomasine and Anders Kristoffer Malthe.”

  “And did you have any contact with the boy over the years? Did Bonnie have any contact with him?”

  “We couldn’t bear to. It’s a terrible thing to say, but we tried to forget the whole thing. I telephoned once to make sure that he was OK, but I didn’t tell Bonnie. Only he wasn’t OK—he had some kind of undiagnosed personality disorder. He would never manage on his own. His father found another woman and moved to Copenhagen. So it was just the two of them, Thomasine and the boy. And my conscience weighed on me even more, as if it were a punishment for what we had done.”

  “But did you perhaps christen him before he was
fostered?”

  “We went to the town hall,” Henny told them. “It was a humanist name day. Bonnie came, but she didn’t dress up. She wore an old anorak and she didn’t say a word.”

  “But she gave him a name?”

  “No, that was me. His name is Eddie.”

  “Eddie Malthe?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the father?” Skarre asked. “Did you ever find out who Jørgen was?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “I found him in the end. I had to see who he was, to know who had ruined so much of our lives. And when Bonnie finally met Olav and was happy and pregnant with Simon, she was able to tell us everything. She eventually told me his name, albeit reluctantly. He lived locally and of course he had his own family, so I got his number and called him right away.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “That I wanted to meet him. That I wanted to talk to him about something important.”

  “But you didn’t say what?”

  “No, because then he might not have come. But you know, people are curious. So we arranged to meet in the shopping center, in Christiania Café. I got there early and was wearing a red silk scarf, so he could see me as soon as he walked in. And I sat there and waited. People came in all the time, but I didn’t see anyone who I thought might be Jørgen from all those years ago. I sat there a while longer, with a cup of coffee, and eventually a man came over to the table. He was calm enough, as though he had thought through all the possibilities. But I was shocked when I saw him. He was much older than Bonnie. And after we had spoken for a while and he understood who I was, it emerged that they had started a relationship when Bonnie was only fifteen and he was over thirty. He was already married and had two children. He hadn’t told her that, so he had betrayed her in every way. He’d promised her that it would be the two of them, but she had to be patient because he had some things he needed to sort out first. Then she got pregnant, and he panicked and left her. He said that he hadn’t realized that she had taken it all so seriously, but that he had often wondered whether she had given birth to the child. You are a coward, I told him. Irresponsible. Arrogant and egotistical. And he agreed. He asked me to give his best wishes to Bonnie, and I said that there was no way I was going to do that, and that he should stay away.”

  “What was his name, Henny?”

  “Jørgen Jonsson. He lives in Gimle. Do you need to talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  A silence fell in the living room. Henny seemed nervous but relieved. She had no idea what the consequences of all this would be, but she knew that she had told them something important. She could see that they were on to something and that she had held them back. With her shame and her pride.

  “He turned up at the funeral, didn’t he?” Sejer asked. “And you told him where to go. You were angry. What did you say to him?”

  “That he should get out. That he had no business there.”

  “Does Eddie know that he was adopted?”

  “I hope for goodness’ sake that he does; he’s not exactly a child any longer. That’s the sort of thing parents should tell their children. And even if they don’t, they often find out. It’s their right to know, don’t you think?”

  She went over to her husband by the window and stroked his hair. He turned toward her, but he had no idea what was going on. He wanted the strange men to leave; he didn’t know them. There was a tension in the room that he didn’t understand, something unfamiliar.

  “Is it my fault?” Henny asked.

  “No. But we have to talk to Eddie Malthe. Please take care of yourself and Henrik. And look after the graves.”

  41

  July 2005

  JULY HAD BROUGHT with it the longed-for summer heat. Bonnie and Simon were out walking in the fields around Geirastadir. They chose a path that ran along the edge of the woods, and Bonnie picked a bunch of wildflowers, dog daisies, bluebells, and clover. She had helped Simon make a big calendar with a square for every day from now until they went to Kenya in August. Each evening, he put a cross in a square and watched the time shrink. It was even more exciting than an advent calendar. He held his mother’s hand firmly, as he always did when they were out walking. Her hand was big and warm and safe.

  They were getting close to Skarven Farm when Simon spotted the trailer between the trees. He stopped in his tracks and pointed. He asked his mother if anyone lived there, but she didn’t think so. The trailer was in poor condition with lots of rust around the windows and a couple of small steps up to the door. She could see some ripped curtains in the windows. Simon tugged at her hand because he wanted to go and look. Bonnie had to laugh. It was so typical of Simon—he loved small houses; he loved making tents with blankets; and he loved the little snail above his peg at daycare, with its house on its back. They opened the door and peered in. On the left were two narrow benches with a table in between. In the middle was a tiny kitchen space with a gas stove and shelves and a cupboard, and on the right were two beds with no bedclothes. The trailer had six windows and they were all dirty. It smelled stuffy and damp. Not particularly inviting, Bonnie thought, but Simon was not of the same mind.

  “Can we spend the night here?” he asked. “Just one night?”

  Bonnie knew he was going to ask that. And all she wanted to do at the moment was please him, her little munchkin.

  “But it’s not our trailer,” she said. She looked up toward the farm at Skarven. “Maybe it belongs to the farmer. They’re probably waiting for it to be towed away because it’s just been abandoned here. Come on, let’s go and ask.”

  The light blue Opel swung into the farmyard, so Eddie stopped and watched them from a distance. He thought that perhaps they wanted to buy some vegetables or berries. He decided to wait, for a while at least. But when the car door opened, he saw to his astonishment that Bonnie had two comforters in her arms. The farmer came out to speak to them. The boy jumped and danced around, tugging at his mother’s sleeve. He had a teddy bear under one arm and a small pillow with a blue case under the other. And then, for some unknown reason, they started to walk down across the fields and soon they were out of sight. Eddie slipped out of the car, found a path that ran past the back of the house, and then spotted them again, his mother and brother. I don’t care if they can see me from the windows, he thought, and looked up at the big white house to his right. When he got to the corner, he stopped. There, by the edge of the woods, was a trailer, and Bonnie and Simon opened the door and went in. They were going to spend the night there, he realized. Each on a narrow bed, the boy with his brown bear under the comforter. Maybe they would lie there and whisper to each other while they waited for it to get dark. She would probably tell him stories and they might even make great plans for the future.

  When he got home, he stood in front of the mirror for a long time. There were now lots of tiny blisters on his flaming cheeks, and he had a belt of the same hell fire around his waist. It felt as though someone had thrown a pan of hot oil over him. He tried to ignore it, but it couldn’t be ignored, even though he was driven by his own project. Determined, he turned and went into the kitchen. He opened one of the drawers and rummaged through the contents. Then he thought carefully before selecting a filleting knife with a wooden handle. There were brass rivets in the handle and the blade was long and sharp. There was an electric knife-sharpener lying beside the knives, which he plugged into the wall.

  42

  August 2005

  SEJER AND SKARRE went to Malthe’s address. First they went to the garage to look for the car. Skarre went in a side door and came back out, stating that there was a red Opel inside. They saw a face at the window and a curtain drawn to one side. It took a long time before anyone opened the door. A man stood there. Tall and solid, dressed completely in black. The first thing they noticed was the violent rash across his face, which looked like a burn.

  He said nothing and just stood there. His sweatshirt was unwashed and his slippers were tartan.

  �
��We’ve come to talk to Thomasine Malthe,” Sejer explained. “Is she in?”

  “No,” was Eddie’s blunt reply. “She’s dead.”

  “Oh,” Sejer said hastily, “I’m so sorry, we didn’t know. Is that recent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you her son, by any chance? Are you Eddie?”

  “Yes. I am Eddie Malthe. I live here alone now, I’ve always lived here.”

  “May we come in?” Sejer asked. “We have some questions we’d like to ask you.”

  Eddie didn’t answer. He left the door open and retreated into the house. They followed. There was complete chaos in the living room, a mess everywhere. Clothes were strewn on all the chairs and there were bags of trash on the floor. Even though it was summer and very hot, all the windows were closed and the smell was awful. Skarre popped into the kitchen, where there were great piles of dirty plates and glasses on the countertop. On the floor lay an unsteady tower of empty pizza boxes. A few withered plants sat on the windowsill.

  “You know why we’re here?”

  “I know.”

  “You have to come to the station with us. We need to have a serious discussion.”

  Eddie nodded. His movements were cumbersome and he was constantly on his guard. Every now and then he put his hand to his burning cheeks. When they were standing out in the hall, Skarre noticed a pair of heavy black leather boots. He lifted one of them up and recognized the pattern on the sole.