SCHÄFER SUCKED THE glow so far down into the filter that he nearly burned his fingers. He hurriedly flicked the cigarette butt out the window and exhaled the smoke in a single, hard breath. Then he parked his car on the narrow street between two rows of long, low buildings and slammed his door shut behind him.
Rævegade was hands down the darkest and most dismal street in downtown Copenhagen. It wasn’t because it was in a bad neighborhood. The narrow street was right next to Saint Paul’s Church, surrounded by ambiance and picturesque little streets. Every once in a while, a joyful cheer could be heard from Borgerkroen, the bar over on Borgergade, but Rævegade was empty and deserted. Dead, really. It made you want to kneel down in the middle of the street and administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Nothing green grew here. There weren’t any potted plants or trees. There were no benches in front of the row of houses the way there were on other streets in the area, no bicycles leaned up against the walls. There was only cold asphalt and snow between the dirty brick buildings, which had gloomy, dark brown shutters alongside their windows. Here—in the middle of the breathing space that was Frederiksstaden—the street sat like a hideous dead end from some poor, hooligan-filled neighborhood in suburban England. Schäfer half expected to see a couple of young lads with crew cuts, wearing Billy Bremner jerseys and dribbling down the street.
Go, Leeds!
He double-checked the address in the text he had received from the investigations department before he had left home. A teacher from the Nyholm School had come by police headquarters earlier in the evening to talk to Schäfer about the Lukas Bjerre case. Lene Nielsen was her name. She had said that she had information about the boy, but the colleague who had sent the text didn’t know any more than that. The woman had left her address and her phone number, and Schäfer had tried calling from the car, but the call had gone directly to voice mail.
Schäfer found the woman’s address in the middle of the block. The windows were dark, and Schäfer glanced quickly at his watch. It was 10:17 PM, so maybe she had already gone to bed.
He rang the bell. Then he knocked firmly on the door, three quick raps with his knuckles.
It took a second and then the lights came on inside. Schäfer heard a wary female voice through the door.
“Who is it?”
“It’s the police.”
The door was opened. The chain was still on, and through the crack Schäfer could see a short, rumpled-looking woman in her pajamas. She looked at least ten years older than sixty-one, the age the national registry reported, and she was scrunching up her eyes in a way that made it clear that her vision was poor.
“The police?” she asked.
“Yes, good evening.” Schäfer held his police badge up, even though it seemed unlikely that the woman would be able to see it. “Erik Schäfer, Copenhagen Police. I’m looking for a Lene Nielsen.”
“That’s me,” she said with a nod.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late. I’m in charge of the Lukas Bjerre investigation, and I understand that you have some information you’d like to share with me. You stopped by police headquarters earlier?”
“Yes, just give me a moment,” the woman said and closed the door.
A few moments later, he heard the chain being undone. Then the woman opened the door.
“Come in,” she said and pointed to the kitchen, which was to the right of the front hall. She had put on a dark green velour bathrobe and a pair of glasses with lenses so thick they must be murder on the bridge of the nose.
Schäfer didn’t offer to take off his shoes. He never did. Instead, he wiped them thoroughly on the doormat and ducked his head as he stepped through the low doorway into the kitchen. The room had a lot of atmosphere, a dark cave with blue and white grandmother plates and a German pendulum clock on the wall. The dining table was set with a red Christmas tablecloth with snowflakes embroidered on it, even though they were a month and a half into the new year.
“Coffee?” the woman asked, roaming a little randomly around the kitchen, as if she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. “Or perhaps you’d prefer tea? I also have an apple pie I could warm up in the toaster oven?”
“No, thank you. Nothing for me.”
The woman walked over and sat down at the table, where her knitting sat in a braided basket, and looked expectantly at Schäfer.
He pulled a notebook and a pen out of his inside pocket and nodded to her.
“I understand that you stopped by police headquarters this evening?”
“Yes,” she said and nodded. “I teach the 3X class. I know Lukas.” She fidgeted with the ribbed wrist cuffs of her pajamas, which stuck out of the sleeves of her robe. Her bedhead and disproportionately large eyes behind her glasses made her look like a bird that had just fallen out of its nest.
“So, Lukas’s class,” Schäfer noted. “How many third-grade classrooms does the school have?”
“Two.”
“And why is yours called 3X?”
“I … I don’t understand your question?”
“When I was a kid, if there were two third-grade classrooms, we called them 3A and 3B,” Schäfer said. “I actually thought all Danish schools did it that way.”
“Yes, that’s how they do it most places, but at Nyholm we don’t like the insinuation encoded in the traditional lettering system. We don’t want half the children to feel like they’re on the B team while the other half is on the A team. It has such a negative ring to it, and we don’t go in for signaling inequities in that way. So our two classes are X and Q.”
If life were a sitcom, Schäfer would have glanced wryly into the camera. Instead, he asked, “What do you teach?”
“Music, science, and technology.”
“And did you teach on Monday when Lukas disappeared?”
“No, and that’s also why I didn’t contact you until now. I did a professional development course in Odense for three days and just got home. Of course, I’ve been following the news and I’ve spoken with my colleagues about the case, but something just occurred to me today.”
“What occurred to you?” Schäfer glanced at the pendulum clock above her. He had an appointment to meet Rud Johannsen at NKC at eleven PM and needed to leave in ten minutes if he was going to make it there on time.
“It was something that happened at one of the recesses,” the woman said. “Based on the school rules, the younger kids from kindergarten through sixth grade are supposed to stay in the schoolyard during recess. It’s a paved area that faces Øster Voldgade.”
“Where the jungle gym is?”
“Yes,” she said with a nod. “The older students—the seventh through ninth graders—are supposed to stay out behind the school or around the gym.”
“Behind the school? So, out by the train tracks?”
“Yes, and the students are actually very good at following these rules. The older ones don’t like to be with the littler ones anyway, and the little ones are often afraid of the big ones, but … every once in a while we’ll still find that one of the younger kids has wandered around behind the school.”
“And?” Schäfer nodded impatiently.
“And today it hit me that I’ve seen Lukas back there twice, on the wrong side of the school. And both times he was talking to some woman and he seemed very upset. He was sorry about it, but … he also seemed scared.”
Schäfer furrowed his brow. “You said he was talking to a woman?”
“Yes, both times I saw them standing a good way down the path, in the direction of the National Gallery. I didn’t think so much about it at the time. I just assumed it was someone he knew …” She shrugged apologetically and did not volunteer anything more.
“What did you do then?”
“Well, the first time I called him back to the school. I asked him if anything was wrong. He denied that, although something was clearly bothering him. But we see that all the time at school, especially with the boys. They’re not so forthcoming when they’ve been beaten up or teased. So I just reminded him that he wasn’t allowed to be back there and then sent him back around to the schoolyard in front again.”
“And the second time?”
“The second time I actually scolded him a little.” She said that as if it were highly controversial. “But the place where they were was actually quite far from the school—three more paces in that direction and Lukas would have been off school grounds entirely, and we can’t have that. So, yes, I scolded him!”
“Did he say anything about who the woman was?”
“No, but I also didn’t ask.”
“Was it the same woman that you saw him talking to, both times?”
“Yes, I think so. Tall, blonde. Sort of a bit rustic to look at.”
Schäfer looked up from his notebook. “Rustic?”
“Yes, sort of a little … rural. She was wearing rubber boots and an oilskin jacket. She wasn’t chic or whatever you’d call it. More … yes, rustic.”
Schäfer bit his lower lip as he thought. “And it wasn’t his mother, the woman you saw?” he asked. “It wasn’t Anne Sofie Bjerre?”
“No, I know her.”
“When did this take place, did you say?”
The woman sighed, thinking back. “I can’t remember the exact dates, but it was this school year. The last time was probably right before Christmas I would think.”
“And how much time was there between the two instances?”
“A couple of weeks, maybe a month. Somewhere around there.”
Schäfer noted that in his notebook. Then he looked up and nodded encouragingly. “Did anything else happen?”
The woman shook her head, embarrassed. “I know it doesn’t sound very important, now that I say it out loud, but I would feel awful if I hadn’t said anything and then Lukas …”
“You did the right thing,” Schäfer said. “This woman you saw Lukas with … Do you think you could identify her if you saw her again?”
The woman pursed her lips together and wrung her hands. “Oh, I don’t know … Maybe?”
Schäfer looked at her thick eyeglass lenses.
Hmm, he thought. Maybe not.