The Fire Pit Read online

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Annika said. “When is it?”

  “Tomorrow at two in Fuglafjørður. Mikkjal’s dealt with it all. That was a relief.”

  “You weren’t expecting him to do it?”

  “Well, I didn’t know, did I? I mean, I thought it might fall on me. But as it turns out Mikkjal is – was – the closest relative, so I don’t have that worry.”

  “Right, I see,” Annika said. She recapped her pen and put it away. “Well, thanks for your help.”

  She was ready to leave but before she could do so Selma Lützen said, “If you don’t mind me asking, what did you do to your face?”

  Annika started to raise a self-conscious hand before she caught herself. “It was the explosion at the harbour,” she said. “Last week.”

  “Oh, that was a terrible business,” Frú Lützen said. “I couldn’t believe that would happen here. Well, it wouldn’t, would it, if it wasn’t for foreigners. It must’ve been horrible.”

  “I’ve had better experiences, yes.”

  “Well I’m glad you’re all right.”

  It struck Annika as an odd expression of compassion from the otherwise indifferent woman.

  “Thank you,” she said and headed back to the car.

  * * *

  From Eiði, Annika drove the forty kilometres to Fuglafjørður, first south through the steep, brown-sided valley of Millum Fjarða as far as Undir Gøtueiði, then doubling back northwards to Justesen’s home. There was no shorter or quicker way, although start and destination were only about twelve kilometres apart on a straight line.

  At Justesen’s house she interviewed the young couple who rented the upper part of the building, Aron and Kirstin Hallur. They had a newborn baby, four days old, and were understandably concerned that Justesen’s death could mean they would have to find somewhere else to live.

  The couple were well placed to be aware of Boas Justesen’s lifestyle and they quickly confirmed Annika’s impression that the man had been a barely functioning alcoholic whose days had been spent in a depressing cycle of drinking beer at Tóki’s café bar by the harbour and weekly trips to the rúsan in Klaksvík to stock up on vodka. Boas didn’t usually have visitors, Aron Hallur said, but uncharacteristically there had been two in the last couple of weeks. The most recent was an Englishman called Reyná who’d asked Boas about the commune at Múli; the other was an older man whom Aron Hallur didn’t recognise: not a local, though, that was for sure.

  After this, and for the sake of thoroughness, Annika also went to speak to Justesen’s nearest neighbours along the road towards Fuglafjørður. She approached the house as a car pulled up on the drive and a middle-aged couple got out – the man in a sports jacket, his wife wearing a coat over her supermarket overall.

  Once Annika explained why she was there, the man – whose name was Debes – cast a disapproving look at Boas Justesen’s house, as if he was well used to doing so. They’d lived next to Justesen for twelve years, he told Annika, but apart from exchanging the occasional nod they’d had nothing to do with him. Nor had they wanted to.

  “He should have been locked up years ago,” Debes said. “Or had his car confiscated. He was a menace on the road. I don’t think he ever drove when he was sober, and with kids wandering around… To be honest, I’m not sorry we won’t have to put up with it any more.”

  “Did you ever report your concerns?” Annika asked mildly.

  “No, but if the police did their job properly… It shouldn’t be necessary for people to tell tales, should it?”

  It was a fairly typical attitude. No one wanted to be accused of being a busybody, but at the same time they wanted their problems sorted out. All that was lacking was telepathic police officers, Annika thought.

  Having said his piece, Debes went inside, but his wife lingered, which Annika took as an indication that she wanted to say more.

  “You wouldn’t know any of Boas’s friends, I suppose?” Annika asked.

  “We barely saw him,” Frú Debes said. “Sometimes in the garden in summer, but that was years ago now. You can tell.” She nodded towards the unkempt, overgrown patch of “garden” round Justesen’s house. “He kept himself to himself and when our girls were small I used to tell them not to go bothering him – you know, just to stay away.”

  “Oh?” Annika said. “Didn’t he like kids?”

  “No, it wasn’t that,” Frú Debes said, glancing away for a moment. “I just didn’t want them near him. Do you know what I mean?” She looked to see if Annika had picked up the inference.

  “I think so,” Annika said. “But did you have any reason to think—”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Frú Debes cut in quickly. “I’m not saying he would have done anything. It was just… I don’t know. Something about him, you know? As women, we have a sense for those things, don’t we?”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Annika said.

  The acknowledgement seemed to satisfy Frú Debes, and now she gathered her bag. “Well, I’d better get on,” she said.

  Annika nodded. “Thanks for your time.”

  Her phone chimed in her pocket as she walked back towards her car. It was Dánjal Michelsen.

  “Elisabet Hovgaard just rang from the hospital,” he said. “She says she’s found some information about the body from Múli. Records, I think.”

  * * *

  After only a day and a half as acting inspector – he still chose not to think of it as filling Ári’s shoes – Hentze had come to a new understanding and perhaps even a grudging admiration of Ári Niclasen’s talents. The greatest of these, as far as Hentze could work out, must have been one for typing. There was no other way Ári could have responded to the seemingly continuous stream of emails, reports, agendas and documents that seemed to be the sole function of an inspector.

  And then there were the meetings. It was one thing to meet and discuss something specific like a theft or fraud case – even a murder. Those cases had a clear goal and the decisions you made could be acted upon. But rather than casework, most of the meetings Ári had scheduled seemed to be about things like “out-sourcing” and “productivity” or “maximising internal resources”, all subjects about which Hentze knew almost nothing and cared even less.

  No, there was no doubt about it, he decided; he just wasn’t cut out for the role of inspector. He had been rowing his own boat for too long to suddenly be confined to the harbour and told to count masts.

  “Is Ári a touch typist, do you know?” he asked Annika when she interrupted yet more laboured work at the keyboard.

  “I don’t know,” Annika said with a frown. “Why?”

  “Because it’s the only thing I can think of that would account for him always leaving the office by five,” Hentze said. He gave a sigh and pushed the keyboard away. “So, how did you get on with Justesen’s friends and neighbours? Anything useful?”

  “No, not so much. I did get the name of another relative, a Mikkjal Tausen, but I haven’t found anyone who knew Justesen back in the seventies yet. I was thinking I might go to one or two of the bars he hung out in. If I can find someone about his age who knew him at school or worked with him…”

  Hentze nodded. “When you find one you’ll find the rest. Did you get the message from Elisabet by the way?”

  “Yeh, I called in to see her on my way back,” Annika said. She took a photocopy of a hospital record from the folder in her hand. “On 16 August 1974 a woman called Astrid Hege Dam was treated for a broken collarbone – the right-hand side – at the hospital emergency department. The cause of the injury is given as fall from steps. From her date of birth she was thirty-three and her address was just put down as Norway.”

  She handed the paper to Hentze, who took it and put on his reading glasses while Annika manoeuvred the spare chair into a position where she could sit down.

  The hospital form had been filled out by hand, Hentze saw; and cursorily by the look of it. In places the handwriting was barely legible and sim
ply stated the nature of the injury and the treatment given.

  “Does this injury prove Astrid Dam is our skeleton, Eve?” he asked, looking up.

  Annika shook her head. “Elisabet says they can’t be certain without the X-rays from the time to make a direct comparison and the hospital can’t find them. But I thought if Astrid was – is – our victim she might have been listed as missing, so I called the Missing Persons department in Oslo. She is on their database and they emailed her file across.”

  She opened her folder again and handed a poorly printed photograph to Hentze who took it and frowned. It was a studio portrait of a smiling, pleasant-faced woman in her early thirties, with brown, wavy hair down to her shoulders. It was cut in a noticeably 1970s style, as was the round-collared blouse she was wearing.

  “According to the Norwegian information, Astrid was a teacher from a town called Voss,” Annika said. “She’d taken a year out to travel but was reported missing on 4 November 1974 by her parents. The last contact they’d had with her was a series of postcards and a letter from the Faroes. In it she said she was living with some friends at Múli.”

  “The Colony commune?” Hentze asked.

  “She doesn’t say that specifically,” Annika said, handing him a scanned copy of the handwritten letter. “But it must have been. The commune had the whole place, didn’t they?”

  “Yeh, I think so.” He looked at the letter where Annika had highlighted the word Múli. “Do you read Norwegian?” The language was quite similar to Faroese in some ways.

  “No, but I got the Norwegian officer to run through the basics,” Annika said. “And I’ve been using online translation for the details.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  “Well, when Astrid’s parents didn’t hear from her again for a month they became concerned and went to their local police who contacted the station here. Apparently someone went out to Múli and asked about Astrid but was told she’d left a few weeks before. That was when she was listed as missing by the Norwegians.”

  Hentze absorbed all that for a moment, then said, “Well, we’ll need dental records to confirm an identification, but from everything you’ve said I don’t think there’s any doubt, do you?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” Annika said. “The Norwegians collect dental records as a matter of course once someone’s been missing for more than a year so I’ve asked for Astrid’s to be emailed across. Unfortunately that’s not the only thing they’re sending, though. Astrid wasn’t travelling alone when she disappeared. She had her daughter with her: Else Elisabeth Dam, aged ten. She’s also listed as missing.”

  “Oh, bloody hell,” Hentze said.

  “Yeh, that’s what I thought. And there’s one other thing, too. When I talked to Boas Justesen’s neighbour, she implied that she didn’t trust him near her children – her daughters. She said she wouldn’t let them play near his house.”

  Hentze frowned. “Did she have anything to justify her suspicions?”

  “No, not as far as I could tell. Just that he was a drunk. But with the little girl, Else, also missing…”

  “Yeh, I see,” Hentze said. “Bloody hell.”

  9

  IN THE TIME IT HAD TAKEN FOR SOPHIE KROGH TO ARRIVE AT the station on Yviri við Strond there had been confirmation that the dental records held in Astrid Dam’s Norwegian missing persons file matched those of the skeletal remains from Múli. The identification was unambiguous.

  Armed with that information and the missing persons file on Astrid’s daughter, Hentze had cancelled a meeting with HR about intranet protocols or something like that and called a case conference: something worth doing. Remi Syderbø joined him, Annika and Sophie in Ári’s office. There was no question of meeting in the broom cupboard for this.

  “Do we know when Astrid died?” Remi asked, leaning on Ári’s desk.

  “Not precisely,” Annika said. “We know she was alive in September 1974 because of her hospital record and because she wrote home. In November it was said that she’d left the islands a few weeks ago, which would make it some time in October. Of course, she didn’t leave at all, so we could suspect that October was when she died.”

  “And the daughter, Else?”

  “We don’t know,” Annika said simply. “All we know is that she was with Astrid when she came here and was listed as missing at the same time.”

  Remi looked at the photograph of Else Dam stuck to the whiteboard. It might well have been taken at the same sitting as the portrait of her mother beside it; the background and lighting were the same. The little girl was blonde and blue-eyed, and she had a bright, slightly mischievous look, as if she had just been privy to a joke.

  Remi looked at Sophie Krogh. “You’re sure there was no other body under the sheepfold where Astrid was found?”

  “As sure as I can be,” Sophie said. “Your guys looked like they needed the exercise so I got them to take the whole structure down. There was no evidence of a second body: no soil staining or disturbance beyond the base of the wall. The ground’s very stony, so digging a grave would have been difficult and there would have been traces.”

  Remi turned to Hentze. “So we have no way of knowing what really happened to Else.”

  “No,” Hentze allowed. “But now we know that the body we have is that of Astrid Hege Dam I think we have to assume that Else is probably dead, too. It’s hard to see any other likely possibility. In which case, the question is what happened to her body?”

  “Well, there’s no way to know, is there?” Remi said. “She could be anywhere, even in the sea.”

  “I don’t think the sea’s very likely,” Hentze said. “There’d always be a chance that she would wash up, and anyone local would know that. Also, to me it doesn’t make sense that the killer would go to the trouble of burying Astrid’s body and carefully covering it up, but not do the same for Else’s.”

  “Then why not put them both in the same place?” Remi asked.

  Hentze shook his head. “I don’t know, unless there was some delay between the crimes.”

  “Well, without evidence either way it’s all still guesswork,” Remi said. “So, as I said, Else’s body could be anywhere. After all this time it’s probably gone forever.”

  “If you wanted to check the immediate area around the settlement you could use ground-penetrating radar,” Sophie said. “That would show up any potential grave sites and it would be fairly easy to bring in: just one person – the operator – and the equipment, that’s all.”

  “And it’s expensive, I expect,” Remi said. “Plus flights, accommodation, subsistence allowance – all on an off chance.”

  “It would be an off chance,” Hentze agreed. “But even if nothing came of it we’d be able to say we’ve put our best efforts into the search. I’m thinking of the Dam family,” he added. “I’m sure they’d want that.”

  Remi gave him a sharp look but it was impossible to tell if Hentze’s reasoning had swayed him. He turned back to Sophie instead. “How many days would it take?”

  “Probably two, to cover the immediate area.”

  Remi chewed that over for a couple of seconds, but he was never one for much prevarication. “All right,” he said in the end. “Two days, but no more. Will you be staying as well?”

  “Well, with such warm hospitality how could I not?” Sophie said, dipping her head in mock deference. “Although technically I’m on leave, so today was a freebie. Speaking of which, I’d better go and find Katrina. If I’m not getting paid at least I want to have sex.” She stood up. “I’ll call Copenhagen and see who can come out with the GPR rig.”

  “Takk,” Hentze said.

  “Okay, but tomorrow I’m back on the clock.” And with that she made for the door.

  “Was she serious?” Remi asked, once Sophie had left. He had switched back to Faroese now.

  “About the sex? I expect so,” Hentze said. “And probably about working for nothing today. I think she was glad of the distraction. Her girlf
riend’s a little… demanding, I think.”

  Remi was clearly reluctant to hear any more personal details. “So, apart from looking for a second grave, what’s our strategy now?” he asked. “We know approximately when Astrid was killed, so are we still thinking Boas Justesen is the most likely suspect?”

  “Well, he certainly knew about the grave,” Hentze said, his tone measured. “And there’s an implication that he might have taken an interest in young girls like Else, although there’s nothing to show it’s true. We can look into it, of course, but given that Astrid and Else were living at the commune I think we should concentrate on the people who were there at the time. Any one of them could have been a witness to Astrid’s death – or her killer.”

  “And how easy is it going to be to find them after forty-odd years, do you think?” Remi asked a tad drily.

  “Well, that’s hard to tell until we start looking,” Hentze acknowledged. “But I think there are a couple of leads we could follow up.”

  * * *

  When I got the call I didn’t bother to put the suit on again, although I did exchange my sweatshirt for a jacket before I left the flat.

  Outside Kirkland’s office, I waited. But not long. When he opened the door his expression was serious but unreadable, which was the intention, of course.

  “Come in, Jan.”

  I closed the door after me without being asked. I wasn’t asked to sit down either, but that was all right with me.

  “I can tell you now that the DPS won’t be taking it further,” Kirkland said as he moved round his desk. “DCI Shannon’s satisfied that Claire Tilman could have confused the times when she was shown Carney’s photo, so there’s no case to answer. Your suspension, and DC Scott’s, are lifted, although the facts of the inquiry may still come out at Carney’s trial, if there is one. The CPS is in the process of reviewing the case.”

  I didn’t have anything worth saying about that, and anything I did say wouldn’t make any difference, so I just nodded. In the end it had been my word and Donna Scott’s against a statement from a traumatised young girl who could easily have been mistaken, even if she wasn’t. My silence wasn’t enough for Kirkland, though. He thought he deserved some reaction.