The Girl in the Ice aka A Price for Everything

CHAPTER 11

It was difficult to trace the woman who went by the nickname “Six Feet of Love” twenty-five years before at the American military base at Søndre Strømfjord in Greenland. And when, ironically, after many twists and turns, the Countess finally did find the woman’s real name, it turned out that she had emailed the Homicide Division two days earlier, because she thought she had information about Maryann Nygaard that might interest the police. The email included the data it had taken the Countess hours to find out a different way. The woman’s name was Allinna Holmsgaard, and the nurse Pauline Berg had interviewed in the car between Roskilde and Viby was not far off in her prediction that the woman’s career probably had something to do with books. Allinna Holmsgaard was Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Copenhagen.

The Countess responded to the email and tried the listed cell phone number a few times, but without success. A call to the Institute for Media, Perception and Communication, which she did not expect much from as the autumn term had not yet started, produced unexpected dividends. A friendly secretary said that the professor was at work, but she did not know exactly where. The building was on Njalsgade at the Iceland Wharf, which as the crow flies was less than a kilometre from Police Headquarters and thus within acceptable walking distance-a good excuse for the Countess to enjoy the summer weather, and a suitable way to prove to herself that she could walk where she wanted, regardless of whoever she risked running into.

The city smiled at her, and she smiled back. Until a woman walking towards her with a pushchair made her turn her back to the street and inspect a random shop window until the danger had passed. One wheel squeaked, which irritated her. How hard was it just to put a few drops of oil in the hub, so other people were not disturbed? She saw her reflection in the shop window and felt ugly. Thickset, wrinkled, fifty in a few years. Soon it would be almost two years since she’d last slept with a man. She’d been invited to a confirmation ceremony and could not decline, although her ex-husband and his live-in were also coming. She had hired an escort; the thought of going to the party alone had been unbearable. Later she paid him to take a week-long vacation with her, which she was not exactly proud of afterwards. It had been divine at night and catastrophic during the day. The man proved to be as self-centred as he was untalented at anything but sex, which was saying a lot. Now she had a man again-in her house in any event. The rest would come eventually, little by little. She turned, looked around carefully and walked on.

Allinna Holmsgaard had aged gracefully; she was in her mid-forties and still lovely. A tall woman with a lightly lined face and graceful movements, standing by the board while she alternately wrote and gestured. The Countess had quietly slipped into the classroom where the witness was teaching, and received a few minutes of free coaching plus time to observe the professor as well as her students. There were only five of them in the class, all young women, sitting in the front row taking notes on their laptops. One woman was recognisable as a TV host and another as a politician. When Allinna Holmsgaard caught sight of the visitor she interrupted her teaching and went up to the Countess, who briefly introduced herself. The professor looked her over from head to toe and said, “Do you have any ID?”

The Countess found her identification card and showed it to her. Allinna Holmsgaard studied it carefully, after which she said apologetically, “Sorry, but for a moment I suspected you were from the press. A couple of journalists have called. It was almost impossible to get rid of them.”

“It’s quite all right. Actually I ought to show my ID routinely.”

The other woman nodded her acceptance of this.

“I assume that it is about Maryann?”

“Yes, it is. Do you have time to speak?”

“I will very soon. What about you, are you in a hurry?”

“Not particularly.”

“Do you know Kulturhuset down on Bryggen?”

“Yes, very well.”

“Why don’t we meet down there when I’m through here? As I said, it won’t be very long. There’s no reason to stay inside on a day like this.”

Half an hour later the two women were sitting on a bench at Gaswerkshavnen with a view over Kalvebod Brygge. The distorted reflection of a glass facade caught the sun at an unfortunate angle and momentarily blinded them. From time to time one of the broad canal excursion barges passed; then they had to smile and wave, while tourists from far and near photographed them for their scrapbooks, and the tour guide’s school English interrupted their conversation. The two women hit it off from the start. For instance, even when they were ordering something to drink, they both agreed that it was too early in the day for white wine, after which they each ordered a glass anyway. They talked about architecture; it was a difficult subject to avoid when they were sitting where they were, and they could have talked for a long time about everything under the sun if the situation had been different. They both felt that way. The Countess took hold of herself first; she was in the midst of a murder investigation after all.

“Were you and Maryann Nygaard friends in Greenland?”

“We were, yes. Very close. It hit me hard when she died, or disappeared rather, but we knew perfectly well what that meant. For a long time I hoped against all the odds that she would be found alive, even though deep down I knew that wouldn’t happen.”

“But you didn’t suspect she was the victim of a crime?”

“Absolutely not. It came as a shock when I read that, and I’m still pretty upset. It’s disgusting to think about, but hard not to.”

“Yes, unfortunately it is disgusting. In your email you said you have information that you think might interest us. Would you like to tell me about it?”

Allinna Holmsgaard drummed her fingers on the table. Her nails were cut short, but nevertheless the sound irritated the Countess.

“When I sent the email, I meant it. But after thinking things through I’m not so sure how important it is.”

“Let me decide.”

“So, you do know that Maryann was pregnant when she… disappeared.”

Just this morning the Countess had read about the pregnancy in the autopsy report. It had surprised her and raised a few questions. She said, “We know that, and it makes us wonder a little.”

“Why is it so strange?”

The Countess could have bitten out her own tongue. Allinna Holmsgaard did not need to know anything about the tampon, but now the revelation was hard to avoid. The Countess vainly tried an evasive manoeuvre.

“Things don’t work that way between us. I ask, you answer. Not the other way around. Tell me about… ”

The sentence faded out, the professor had guessed the reason for the Countess’s surprise. The finger drumming stopped, and she said in distress, “Maryann’s pregnancy was not proceeding normally. She was bleeding, although she shouldn’t have been, and was flown to Holsteinsborg for a closer examination but there was nothing wrong. She was menstruating when she died, is that it?”

“Yes, that’s how it was. Do you know the child’s father?”

“No, I don’t. That is what I thought might interest you. You see, the whole thing was very mysterious, almost cloak and dagger, and Maryann did not want to come out with it when she finally found out. His name, that is.”

“Maybe you should start from the beginning.”

“Yes, of course. Maryann got pregnant about ten weeks before she died. It was by a geologist who was staying at the base for a few days while he waited for good weather, so he could continue on to Thule. They fell in love, just like that, like you read about in romance novels. Or in any event, Maryann did. I have my doubts about what it was like in reality for him. His name was Steen Hansen, he maintained, but that was a lie-”

The name struck the Countess like a blow from a hammer. Her jaw dropped and then her glass too. The stem broke, and wine spilled over the table. Allinna Holmsgaard asked worriedly, “What’s the matter? Are you all right?”

The Countess pulled herself together. With all her strength she tried to repress the dry female voice that was suddenly echoing in her head. Hold on to Steen Hansen, Baroness. Hold on to Steen Hansen, Baroness. The psychic’s words, and even on the phone they had been unnerving. Now it was much worse.

“No, it’s nothing, just go on.”

“So, I did not find out that the name was false until later, but there were other strange things about him… things that didn’t seem right. I remember that we women said that we had never seen such a well-dressed geologist. They usually resemble something they dug up. It was unusual besides that the Americans provided an aircraft for him alone when the weather cleared up. We speculated like that without really getting into it very deeply. There were always all sorts of stories in circulation, it was a way to pass the time.”

She poured a little water in her empty wine glass and drank it.

“But then Maryann found out that she was pregnant, three or four weeks after he had left, and abortion was ruled out. She’d had an abortion once before, and mentally she couldn’t take it. So she wrote a letter to the father. She did not have his address, only his name, she thought, so she addressed the letter to GGS, where he said he came from.”

“GGS?”

“Greenland’s Geological Surveys, it was under the Greenland Ministry at the time. The department was housed on Øster Voldgade along with the other geological institutions. Today GGS has merged with its Danish sister organisation. Well, the letter was returned, no one knew any Steen Hansen apparently. Maryann was down in the dumps for a couple of days, but then she thought of writing to the base commander at Thule. That was not normally something you did, but on the other hand, what else could she do? She explained the situation and asked that he forward her letter to Steen Hansen, if he could. She also sent a picture of him. It was just a snapshot, but all in all her persistence paid off because two weeks later Steen called her. Yes, he was married and had a child, the jerk, but he had backbone enough to contact her.”

“Why didn’t she want to tell you his real name?”

“I don’t know, she didn’t want to say. I recall that it irritated me. We also nagged her about that, but there was no getting her to budge. And then she disappeared, of course, and after that I had a really bad conscience because maybe she had gone away by choice, if you understand.”

The Countess understood only too well.

“Still, for a long time I hoped as I said that she would come back. Things did not really add up because she was simply not that depressed. She withdrew into herself, but two days before her trip to the ice cap we talked about baby clothes and that sort of thing. But that’s really all I wanted to tell you, and I can’t see how it will help you very much.”

“Maybe it will, maybe not. This fake Steen Hansen, what did he look like?”

“Very ordinary. Light hair, crew-cut, not that tall, in his early thirties. The truth is, I don’t really remember him. I only spoke to him a few times.”

“Any distinguishing features?”

“Not that I remember, apart from his hair that is. I mean, he was probably the only Danish man who had such short hair. All the others at that time had long hair, at least below the ears. Oh, yes, and… there was actually one other thing about him, now I remember it. He talked in an unnaturally high voice like a girl’s, a falsetto it’s called. Someone called him the Castrato… well, as a nickname, that is. Everyone got a nickname, even after a few days, and… ”

The Countess tuned out the professor’s words for a moment. She had never before known a witness, twice within a minute, give her information that almost made her fall off her chair. This time, however, she subdued her reaction and admonished herself that the lead about a voice was subject to interpretation and had to be backed up, and that could be damned hard to do. She concentrated again on the conversation.

“Is there anything else you know about him?”

“Well, he gave her his cap, but that probably doesn’t have any great significance.”

“Just tell me.”

Allinna squinted briefly and then said serenely, “Well, he had one of those knitted caps with interlaced fleur-de-lis in different colours. His mother had made it for him, he said, but that was definitely not true because there was a manufacturer’s tag inside. Well, whatever, Maryann loved that cap, and so he gave it to her.”

“As a memento?”

“Yes, maybe. She was very happy about it anyway. Personally I thought it was hideous, too many colours in it. I recall that once she was standing in front of a mirror with it on, and I must have commented on it. And then she said something along the lines of it probably could attract a few males if ever she was short of money for rent. Well, that was only in jest, but she wore it a lot, and I know that she had it on when she disappeared because I brooded about that for days afterwards. For me it made her disappearance even sadder, though that doesn’t make any real sense.”

The Countess nodded; she had seen the cap herself. It was lying beside Maryann Nygaard’s corpse, and quite involuntarily she thought that Allinna Holmsgaard had been right-it really wasn’t very pretty. She dropped the subject and asked instead, “And you have no idea why he used a false name?”

“No, unfortunately. Maryann maintained that he really was a geologist, and he was there to negotiate some sensitive concession agreements with the Americans on extraction of underground minerals. At first that didn’t sound completely off the wall. There were a number of disagreements between Danish and Greenlandic atomic power opponents on the one hand and GGS and Risø on the other. This visit allegedly concerned extraction of uranium and perhaps thorium from the Kvane field in Narsaq, and the subject was sensitive to say the least, but… well, it wasn’t logical. I mean, what was he doing in Thule in that case? The American Air Force was not involved in mining operations, and Thule Airbase is almost two thousand kilo-metres from Narsaq.”

“So you didn’t believe that?”

“Not really, but I didn’t say anything about it. In 1983 the Cold War was still being conducted, so it wasn’t so strange if there were things going on that the public shouldn’t know about.”

“You may be right about that. Tell me, the picture of the man you mentioned, what should I do if I really want to see it?”

Allinna Holmsgaard thought about it, then she threw out her arms regretfully.

“It won’t be easy. I can’t even remember who Maryann got it from.”

The Countess waited, there was more to come.

“You do understand that he had left for home a long time before Maryann died?”

“Completely, but I would still like to see his picture.”

“Maybe there is a chance, although it’s slight. Do you know Knud Rasmussen's House?”

“No, unfortunately not.”

“It’s a museum in North Zealand, Gribskov Municipality, I think. The former museum director collected personal photos from both bases. It was a kind of hobby for him. I have also sent him copies of my own pictures.”

“This sounds like a real uphill climb, especially since I don’t know what Hansen looks like. Can I convince you to assist me a little?”

The Countess waited patiently while Allinna Holmsgaard considered. Finally she said, “Tomorrow my husband and I are leaving for Zurich. This trip has been planned for a long time, and I would be loath to cancel or postpone it. On the other hand I owe Maryann, and society for that matter. Only you can decide if it it’s important enough for me to cancel.”

It was tempting, but the Countess controlled herself.

“No, go on holiday, it’s not that important.”

“I’m happy to hear that, but I can easily assist you over the Internet. If I send you an email this evening about the exact period of time when our friend was at Søndre Strømfjord then there won’t be very many pictures to investigate, if there even are any… ”

Together they went over the details. When it was decided, the Countess had only one thing left to do. From her bag she took a picture of Andreas Falkenborg in 1983, and set it in front of the professor.

“Do you recognise him?”

“Yes, it’s Pronto, of course, that childish soul. What do you want to know about… oh, no… ”

The Countess questioned her closely but Allinna Holmsgaard could not contribute anything groundbreaking.