Dearest Camilla,
I’m sorry, but there’s a terribly sad thing I need to tell you. Britt has taken her own life. I’m the one who found her. It is so sad, but at the same time it was beautiful.
After the arrests out on Strand Boulevard, I was given permission to drive out to Vestre Prison and release her. She seemed both glad and relieved, but she was very unhappy to hear that the goddess of vengeance turned out to be a seventeen-year-old boy who’d craved Ulrik’s recognition and love so much that he was driven all the way out there where the heart turns cold and reason runs out, as she put it.
It must have been all the classical music that made her think so poetically. Others would probably say that the boy suffered so much hurt that he became a cold and calculating shit. But that’s not how he seems now. He’s desperately unhappy and thinks a lot about his mother, who he feels he’s let down. Now she’s alone while he sits in prison.
Vigdís has decided to stay in Denmark, and she’ll try to find a place to live close to where Jón will serve his time, so she can visit him. It’ll most likely be on Jutland. That’s where most of the high security juvenile prisons are.
Britt was sorry that Signe was never allowed to meet her brother. And if she had decided to keep on living, she would never have been able to forgive him. Ulrik, that is. Jón she mostly felt bad for, and she was very sad when I told her that he’d end up serving his sentence for many years to come.
But Ulrik also got his punishment. He’s in prison and already confessed during the first interrogation that he’d known for several years about Nick Hartmann’s business with replica furniture. He even named the two people Hartmann entered into a business agreement with, both full-fledged members of the biker club. One of them is that Tønnes, who you must know from the media and who was a complete stone face the times I talked with him. But that’s how they are!
It turned out to be Ulrik himself who suggested that he and Hartmann get together and split the profit if he brought an extra container home. But he got scared when Hartmann was killed, didn’t want to do anything with the goods and was planning to just let it all sit there until things calmed down again. But then everything with Signe happened, and when the police could suddenly connect him to the warehouse and started looking at what was in there, he went into a panic. He can’t explain how he could let Britt take the blame. He’s completely silent on that matter.
When Britt and I drove out of Vestre Prison, we stopped and did some shopping along the way so she wouldn’t come home to an empty fridge. No one had lived in the house for several weeks. She said she was looking forward to coming home. To her music and garden. She seemed glad and talked about everything she had to do.
She fooled me.
I called her the next morning. Several times. When she didn’t answer her phone, I decided to drive out there. But she didn’t answer the door either, so I smashed a window pane on the weather porch. She lay up in her bed. She’d plucked the last roses from the garden and tied them in a little bouquet, which she held on her chest along with a picture of Signe. Next to her bed was the cello.
In a letter, she asked that there not be any formal funeral service, just wanted to be placed in the earth next to Signe.
I am terribly sorry to have to write this to you.
Warm greetings,
Your Louise
* * *
The sun cast a sheen over the thin leaves of the palms. Camilla sat on the beach and cried. Markus was out in the water on his boogie board and bobbed in the waves. She still hadn’t gotten herself together enough to tell him what had happened at home.
The tears rolled even more when, in the middle of feeling powerless over how it had ended, she admitted that it was probably best for Britt to end things that way. She couldn’t go on living. Why should she? There was nothing more for her, nothing to live for. Even though her thoughts and grief overwhelmed her, still Camilla understood her decision.
She’d taken a chair from the terrace with her down to the beach and for a long time just sat and looked out over the Pacific Ocean, letting her thoughts rest.
Kauai was so lush and filled with greenery that she’d immediately understood why it was the one out of Hawaii’s seven islands to be called Garden Island, and the one Frederik Sachs-Smith had chosen for his vacation paradise.
They’d arrived in the morning on a plane from Honolulu, so she hadn’t managed to see much yet, except for what they drove by when they crossed the island from the airport. When she’d unpacked, she borrowed the computer that was in the living room to check her e-mails, and there was the e-mail Louise had sent the previous evening.
* * *
Camilla wailed like a child, the tears dripping from her cheeks down onto her chest. On the edge of the water, Markus practiced jumping up on the short surfboard and riding along when the waves crashed toward the beach.
She was startled and jumped when she heard a deep, male voice behind her. When she turned around, the sun was in her eyes and she only saw the shadow of the person who came walking toward her from the house.
He seemed concerned, solicitous, and a little puzzled to find an unknown woman sitting in a chair from the house and crying.
Camilla dried her cheeks, embarrassed. Felt herself caught, had thought she was alone with her grief.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know anyone else was here. My son and I arrived this morning, and we have permission to borrow the house.”
He looked older and taller than she’d imagined.
“A death,” she said in explanation. “I just found out about it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Walther Sachs-Smith reached out his hand and said that she really didn’t need to apologize.
“I’m the uninvited guest,” he said. “My son owns the house, and he doesn’t even know that I’m here.”
Camilla took a step back, didn’t entirely know how she should react or what she should say.
Behind her Markus called for her to look and see that he’d just about gotten it. He was about to put his feet on the waves, but when she turned to see, he was already in the water, patiently preparing himself for yet another attempt.
“I know who you are,” she said and smiled as she turned her eyes from her son to the head of the Sachs-Smith family. “But it’s a bit of a surprise to meet you here. Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
He smiled at her and laid his hand on her shoulder to get her to walk up to the house with him.
“We can see your son from the terrace,” he said and gallantly pulled out a chair for her.
He disappeared into the kitchen and came back with a bottle of white wine and two glasses.
“Right now, I’m happiest letting people think that I’m dead,” he said.
“I’m not sure that Frederik believes the story. At any rate, he didn’t seem convinced when I visited him.”
Camilla extended her hand and introduced herself, which she’d forgotten to do when he’d suddenly appeared on the beach.
“I actually interviewed your son to hear what he thought about the way the story was playing out,” she said and took the glass he poured for her.
He was trim and obviously kept himself in good shape. His shorts were light colored and his flaxen shirt hung over them loosely. His eyes were friendly, but nevertheless decisive when he sat back into the cushions of his wide bamboo chair and looked at her.
“Am I wrong in thinking that I recognize your name?” he asked.
She looked away for a moment. Then she shook her head and said that she couldn’t deny it.
“But I’m not working as a journalist right now,” she added. “Just in this one instance when I visited Frederik.”
“It would mean a lot to me if we could keep it between the two of us that you met me out here.”
Camilla waited, wasn’t much in favor of that kind of agreement if she felt there was something more behind it.
“Why’s it so important for you to let people go on believing that you’re dead?”
He sat a while studying her, as if he were assessing. Then he leaned forward in his chair and folded his hands.
“Because I’m not ready to turn up yet. I’m not coming home until the day I can prove that my wife was murdered.”
He chewed on the words a bit, as if it were the first time he’d said them out loud.
Camilla’s thoughts flew to Britt, and she couldn’t manage to stop the tears. Quickly, she blinked them away.
From down at the water, Markus came walking up toward them. He’d caught sight of the man and seemed shy, but still curious.
“My wife was killed, and if I’m found I’ll also be killed. That’s why it’s important that I find out what they’ve done before they find me. But it’ll take time because I can’t get to the information I have lying at home. So, I hope we can agree that you won’t tell anyone that you met me?”
Camilla realized that she’d sat holding her breath while he talked.
“Of course,” she promised and nodded. “I’d also like to help you get hold of what you have lying at home. My only condition is that I get exclusive rights on the story.”
He thought about it for a moment.
“Agreed,” he said, and with a smile, reached out his hand.