Louise had cleared off Eik’s desk to ready it for Olle, who was moving in to help her on the case. She piled old case files on the shelves lining the rear wall of the office, then she folded up Charlie’s blanket and laid it out in the hall for Eik to take back to his old office. Before she could text Olle to say that everything was ready for him, the telephone rang.
“Have you had a look at what I sent over?” Davies sounded excited.
She pulled her office chair out and sat down, and as she started her computer she said, “What exactly is it we’re talking about?”
“The bank statement! We discovered that the deposits made into Sofie Parker’s account all came from Danish account holders. It’s obvious from the account numbers. We’re still working on access to the Swiss account, and we’re in touch with Europol as well.”
“Interesting.” Louise asked if Eurojust had issued an international letter of request. When another EU country originated the request for information from a foreign bank, a Danish court order wasn’t sufficient to gain access.
“It’s done,” he said. “I sent the statement listing the account’s movements to you. It’s attached to the email, along with the international court order. We’re hoping you can help us find out who made the deposits.”
Louise opened the attached file, which was a scanned copy of the bank statement from the Zurich bank. Curious now, she leaned forward. “The amounts are very different,” she said. One of the deposits was around twenty thousand euros, seven times larger than the next deposit. “Did you ask the husband what she might have been paid for?”
“He still insists he knows nothing about the account. And as he explained, his wife wasn’t particularly open about her past. All he knows is that she grew up in Jutland, and both her parents are dead. She told him her father died shortly after her confirmation, her mother about six months before they met. He said his wife was an only child, and I must say he sounded convincing when he claimed she had no connections to her homeland. And he knows nothing about her disappearance from a boat outside Rome.”
“But she must have had contact with someone here in Denmark.” Louise made copies of all the bank papers.
“We’ve confiscated her computer and cell phone, and our tech people have just picked up his stationary computer at his business to have a look. Maybe something there will connect him to the Zurich bank. Unfortunately, it will be several days before we hear from them.”
Louise glanced over the deposits. “No matter what, you should investigate what’s on his computer,” she mumbled. She couldn’t understand why the English police hadn’t confiscated the husband’s hard drive and looked closely at all the correspondence and websites he had visited.
“We’re going through his accounts,” Davies reassured her. “We’re looking for any irregularities. Perhaps his wife withdrew money and sent it to Denmark, to deposit in her own account.”
“Isn’t England one of the most tax-friendly countries? If they wanted to avoid taxes, wouldn’t it make more sense to use an English tax shelter instead of sending the money over here, where the taxes are so high?”
“We’re not thinking in terms of taxes,” Davies said. “We suspect she might have been pilfering her husband’s account. She might have been planning to disappear again.”
Aha, Louise thought, letting the idea sink in.
“We still lack a motive for the murder,” Davies reminded her.
“The deposits here aren’t from a single Danish bank. It seems that several are involved. I’ll look into this.”
“Good. If they aren’t her own accounts, we are, of course, interested in the identities of the people who deposited the money.”
“I would think so,” Louise said, hoping he could sense her smile. Of course, it would be nice to know who was depositing the money. She felt a devilish satisfaction at the thought that at least it wasn’t Eik who had given his missing girlfriend all that money. If he had been making foreign deposits, the bank employee would have said so.
“I’ll get back to you as soon as we contact the banks,” she said, as Olle walked in carrying case files under his arm and a cup of coffee in his hand. “You’ll hear from me,” she promised.
She smiled at Olle Svensson and welcomed him to the Special Search Agency, a small unit in the Search Department. Under Louise’s direction, the agency investigated the missing persons cases where illegalities were suspected.
“I hope you’re not in the middle of another case, because we’ve just received a list of banks we need to contact.” She handed him the printout.
“At your service,” Olle said, reading the list as he walked over to his chair.
Eik’s chair, Louise thought. She hadn’t seen him this morning, didn’t even know if he had come in. Maybe she should stroll by Rønholt’s office? Hell no! He had to take care of himself.
“What about if we just divide them up?” Olle suggested. “That would be six apiece. I’ll start from the bottom, you start from the top.”
“Great.”
“And I’m assuming we mail the court order and account numbers along with our requests, and wait for the banks to call us? Usually they want confirmation that they’re giving out information to the police.”
“Give them a call when you send out the requests, just to be sure. So they don’t keep us waiting. We don’t want these to end up with someone on vacation.”
A few people in the department always made excuses, said they were waiting on a call when they were caught taking a case too lightly, but that didn’t work in her agency.
“Of course,” Olle said, in a way that revealed he wasn’t one of those slackers.
“The account is part of the estate of Susanne Hjort Madsen,” the Nordea employee said.
Louise wrote down the bank customer’s personal identification number (PIN). She was told that the estate would end up with Susanne Madsen’s husband, just as soon as the tax authorities were finished.
“And how much is in the account?” Louise asked.
“When the account was closed, it contained about thirty-eight thousand kroners.”
“Which means that eight thousand is a large amount to transfer,” Louise said. She then asked to have the bank statement mailed to her.
“The money was transferred a week before the customer’s death,” the woman on the phone said, “and the husband was aware of the money transfer. It was a joint account. The transfer was made through our foreign subsidiary, but there were sufficient funds in the account, and we had no suspicion of wrongdoing.”
“There probably hasn’t been,” Louise assured her. “We’re simply interested in clarifying the relationship between the deceased and whoever received the money.”
She hung up and checked the CPR number. The family lived in Lynge. The widower was sixty-seven years old, five years older than his deceased wife.
Across the desk, Olle hung up. “An estate,” he said, when Louise gave him a questioning look. “Christine Løvtoft, forty years old. Died just under ten months ago. She transferred one hundred thousand a few weeks before her death. I have her husband’s name. They had separate accounts, and he didn’t have access to hers.”
After Louise had gone through four of the names, she raised an eyebrow at Olle. “Is there anyone alive on your list?”
He looked down at the paper and nodded. “Two of them. How about yours?”
She shook her head and said she was still waiting on the last two.
An employee at Sparekassen Sjælland reported that the account in question belonged to Kurt Melvang, an eighty-eight-year-old man living in a nursing home in Bispebjerg. “It looks like the account is being handled by a third party,” the man at the bank said. Louise had already punched in the elderly man’s CPR number and found the address. Rønnevang Nursing Home.
“For two of the names on my list, the survivor is dead, too, but the deaths occurred almost a year apart with one of them, and here”—Olle pointed at his monitor—“they were seven months apart.”
Someone knocked on the door. Louise watched Eik take a step into the room before noticing Olle sitting in his chair. An awkward moment followed before Olle glanced at Louise for some sign. She heard Charlie sniffing his blanket outside.
“You’re down in Olle’s office now,” Louise said. She glanced at Eik; he didn’t look hungover or suffering from lack of sleep, though it had been very late when she threw him out. In fact, he looked like himself. A slightly distant version of himself. He nodded quickly and said he was fine with that. He closed the door behind him.
“Is something going on here?” Olle asked. Fortunately Louise’s telephone rang at that moment. When she hung up, she told him that another account was part of an estate.
“Why are the people transferring money into the account dying?” she asked.
“Maybe the money is used for burials?” Olle said. “Or upkeep of grave sites?”
Louise nodded. “Expenses in connection with closing estates? But why a Swiss account for things like that? We need to find out what they paid for.”