“A CUP OF COFFEE, please. With a little milk on the side.”
Schäfer gave a friendly nod to the girl who took his order.
He had been seated at a window table in the bistro on Kongens Nytorv and was now looking out at the construction mess by the subway station across the street where a large, reddish-brown crane towered up from the roadway like a brachiosaurus.
Trucks loaded with oversized metal cylinders and strange-looking plastic things coughed their way into and out of the construction site, splattering slush toward the tourists—who were the only people it occurred to to go anywhere near the site. There were a few barricades left on the south side of the square, but there—in the middle of it all—for the first time in years you could see the equestrian statue.
At long last.
Beautiful and majestic, like an old friend the city had been deprived of for ages.
Schäfer smiled at the sight. It was like seeing Atlantis rise from the sea.
The waiter set his coffee in front of him and handed him a menu.
“Thanks, that’s okay,” Schäfer said, holding up one hand. “Just the coffee.”
“Are you waiting for someone?”
Schäfer nodded and looked at his watch. It was 9:08, and Heloise hadn’t shown up yet. It wasn’t like her to be late without letting him know. Plus, she had emphasized in her text that this was important.
Schäfer called Heloise, but the call went straight to her voice mail. He asked her to call him back.
By the time he finished his coffee, it was 9:21, and he was starting to have a nagging feeling—the kind that whispered to him that something was wrong.
He tried to catch Heloise by phone again, without any luck.
Then he asked for the check.
The front door to her residential building on Olfert Fischers Gade was open and Schäfer swore softly. He had told Heloise that she should make sure to get the lock mechanism fixed so every conceivable suspicious character couldn’t just waltz in and out of the building. It sometimes seemed like she was completely immune to common sense.
He made his way up the creaky old stairs and was out of breath by the time he reached Heloise’s apartment on the fifth floor. He cleared his throat to get that tobacco tickle under control and knocked on the door.
He waited for a long moment and then knocked again.
“Heloise?” he called. “Are you in there?”
The door opened a crack, and Heloise looked out, looking like someone who had just woken up. She was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, was barefoot, and her hair was uncombed.
“Hey,” she said. Her voice was shaky and standoffish.
Schäfer flung out his arms in annoyance. “I’ve been waiting for you for half an hour. What happened? Are you sick?”
“I’m sorry,” Heloise said and took a step back in her entryway so that he could come in. “I had completely forgotten we were supposed to meet. Sorry about that.”
Schäfer opened the door to the living room, so the morning light hit Heloise’s face. The skin around one of her eyes was swollen and red, and a little blood was trickling from her eyebrow.
“What the hell?” he exclaimed. “What happened to you?”
“Nothing.” Heloise averted her gaze.
“What do you mean, ‘nothing’? You’re a total …” Schäfer stopped himself. Then his eyes widened. “Did Martin do this to you?”
Heloise held up a hand defensively. “He didn’t mean it.”
“I’m going to fucking kill him!” Schäfer seethed. He started pacing back and forth in the room. “I knew this would happen one day. I knew it!”
“He didn’t mean it,” Heloise repeated placatingly. “I pushed him away and then he lost his temper …”
“Do you hear yourself?” Schäfer pointed to one ear with an angry finger. “You sound exactly like those women we come out to see after some asshole of a husband has beaten the crap out of them.”
“I’m not like those women,” Heloise said, irritated.
“You’re defending him!” Schäfer bellowed. “What the hell is the difference?”
“I threw him out, okay? It’s over! I threw him out.”
“You need to report him.” Schäfer put his hands on his sides. “He needs to be punished for this.”
Heloise turned away from him. She walked off into the kitchen and threw a pod into the coffee machine, which spat a stream of black liquid into a little porcelain cup.
She turned back toward Schäfer and crossed her arms, waiting for his next outburst.
“You need to file an official report against him,” he said, now with more composure.
“No, I don’t want to.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I’m simply not up to the whole production, and because …” She shrugged. “I provoked him. I was intentionally trying to push him over the edge, so I wouldn’t have to be the only bad guy. So part of it was my fault.”
Schäfer’s lower jaw fell a couple of inches, and he looked at her, dumbstruck.
“How in the world can you believe that what you did—whatever it was—could justify his behavior? This business is never okay. Never! Just look at yourself for Pete’s sake!” He stepped over closer to her, studying her face with an expression of concern. “Can you even see out of your left eye?”
Heloise pulled away, positioning herself with her side to Schäfer, so he couldn’t see her swollen eyelid.
“I’m not condoning his behavior, but … I haven’t been honest with him. From the very beginning of our relationship, he’s said that he wanted to start a family, that that was a deciding factor for him. And for a year and a half I’ve let him think that that was a possibility with me, so …”
Schäfer shrugged unsentimentally. “So what?”
“And so I said some things that were mean. I hurt him.”
“Mm-hmm, and this is the world’s smallest violin playing in honor of Martin Duvall.” Schäfer rubbed the tips of his thumb and index finger together. “That’s life, right? We don’t always get what we want. Our hearts get ripped to pieces and then they heal again. We don’t start punching each other with our fists.”
Schäfer was seething with rage. He blamed himself for not being more attentive to Heloise. From the beginning he had known that Martin Duvall was a loose cannon, a crummy wolf in permanent press trousers. No matter how impressed Connie was by the man’s straight teeth and long eyelashes, he couldn’t control his inner Neanderthal.
Schäfer’s hand grazed the handcuffs that hung from his belt. His fingers itched to slap them onto Duvall’s wrists, and Heloise’s leniency really irked him.
“Martin has always had a hard time controlling his temper,” she said. “But deep down he’s a good person.”
“No, you need to wake the hell up now, Heloise!”
“All right, stop!” She held up her hand. “It’s sweet of you to get so upset on my behalf, and I appreciate your being here, I do. But you’re not my dad, okay? I can take care of myself.”
“I’m not your dad, but if I were, you would darn well be grounded for your behavior.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Yes, damn it, I’m mad! You need to get that eye checked out. That doesn’t look good at all.”
Heloise nodded. “All right, I will.”
“Come on. I’ll drive you to the doctor.”
“No thanks. I can do it myself.”
Heloise took the full coffee cup from the machine and handed it to Schäfer.
He hesitated a moment. Then he accepted it, took a sip, and tried to stabilize his breathing.
There was a long silence between them. Heloise walked over and sat down at the kitchen table.
“Well,” Schäfer said and sat down next to her. “What was it that was so important when you wrote to me yesterday?”
He looked at her one eye, where blood had accumulated, discoloring the white of her eyeball. He winced compassionately and cautiously touched her chin to rotate her head so that he could better examine her injuries.
Her left eyelid was swollen and red, her eyebrow split near the bridge of her nose. Luckily it was just a little gash, and it was hidden in the eyebrow hairs. It wouldn’t leave an ugly scar, Schäfer thought. Not on her face, anyway.
“Why did you text me last night?” he asked again. “What was it that you wanted to tell me?”
Heloise looked up at him and blinked a couple of times.
Schäfer could see that she was hesitant to say whatever it was that she had on her chest. He returned her chin to its previous position and eyed her calmly.
He knew that look in her eyes. He had seen it before.
“Heloise,” he said, shaking his head and closing his eyes for a second. “What have you done now?”
She got up without saying anything and walked into the living room. When she returned, she set down two sheets of paper on the kitchen table in front of him. One was a printout from Google Maps, an overview of small roads, paths, and forests in an area of Odsherred with a lot of summer vacation houses. One of the neighborhoods had been outlined with a red Sharpie. The second page was the picture of the barn door from Lukas Bjerre’s Instagram profile.
Schäfer gave her a piercing look. “What is this?”
“That’s the place you’re looking for.” She pointed to the picture. “That barn there. I think it’s somewhere in this area.”
She pushed the map closer to him.
Schäfer didn’t say anything. He just stared at her as a knot of anger grew in his stomach.
“I know I’ve been there,” Heloise said. “I’ve stood in front of that barn recently. And I haven’t been anywhere except Rørvig lately. I can’t remember exactly where I saw the place, but it was in this area here, the zone I outlined in red.” She nodded at the map.
Schäfer chewed on his lower lip as he thought. Then he held up the picture of the barn door. His voice was controlled, but he gazed penetratingly into Heloise’s eyes.
“Where did you get this picture from?”
“Yeah, where do you think?” She stood up and stepped over to the window, her back to Schäfer.
“I thought I could trust you.” His voice was thick with disappointment.
“You can trust me!” Heloise turned around and flung up her hands. “I’m coming clean with you right now, right? And as you can see, this isn’t in the newspaper. I haven’t told anyone else. The most important thing right now is to find the boy, isn’t it? And I’m telling you: The barn you’re looking for is somewhere up in Rørvig. You’re welcome!”
“Why is it constantly necessary to remind you that you’re a journalist?” Schäfer asked tiredly. “You’re not a detective.”
“I’m an investigative journalist. Apart from the gun, there’s not a lot of difference between our jobs.”
They were interrupted by Schäfer’s phone ringing.
“We are not done discussing this,” he said and then answered his phone.
“What’s up?” he asked, stepping out into the living room to make sure Heloise couldn’t hear what was being said on the other end of the line.
Nils Petter Bertelsen’s voice was sharp in a way that made Schäfer sit up and pay attention. “We got the results back from Pathology on the handprint on the radiator in the apartment on Sølvgade.”
“And?”
“It belongs to a Salah Ahmed.”
“Who’s he?”
“Danish citizen, born in Iraq, thirty-eight years old,” Bertelsen said. “He came to Denmark in 1993. He works as a cab driver and lives in Hvidovre with his wife and newborn son.”
“What have we got on him?”
“Not much. He was charged with firearm possession last year in connection with the gang conflict. He was stopped during a raid on Blågårdsgade when he was dropping off a fare who happened to be a member of the Loyal to Familia gang. The police searched his taxi and found a knife. He was dragged down to the station, registered, and questioned, but the charge was dropped again immediately afterward.”
“Is that all we have on him?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s pick him up and see what he has to say,” Schäfer said. “I’m going to send you something right now that you should ask Bro or one of the others to check out. A neighborhood of summer cabins up north. We received a tip that the barn we’re looking for might be up there.”
Heloise stood in the doorway to the living room, watching Schäfer as he hung up.
“What’s up?” she asked.
Schäfer gave her a measured look and didn’t answer the question. He walked over to the kitchen table and took a picture of the map of the neighborhood of summer vacation homes. He sent it to Bertelsen and stuck his phone back in his pocket.
“If Duvall comes back, call me right away. Got it?” He pointed an angry finger at Heloise’s beat-up face. “Don’t let him in!”
She nodded just once.
Schäfer closed the door firmly behind him. Then he left.