The Girl in the Ice aka A Price for Everything

CHAPTER 48

In Høje Taastrup the Countess was at her first clairvoyant consultation ever. It took place on the fourth floor of an apartment complex not far from the station. She had expected a different setting, perhaps a gloomy villa with a tower room and ravens on the roof, but that was not the case. The nameplate on the door said Stephan Stemme & wife, and it was the husband who answered when she rang the bell. He was a skinny old man with a starved, bony face and deep-set eyes that drew things in but gave nothing back. They settled accounts in the entry, cash and no receipt. He carefully put the money in a worn, black pouch he removed from a bureau drawer. Then he locked the drawer, took the key and knocked on a door immediately to one side.

“You may call her Madame.”

His voice was dark bordering on rusty, and his French-sounding Madame grated gutturally, almost sternly, as he opened the door for the Countess.

The room she entered was light and pleasant, all philistine comfort as a shield against life’s shocks and spills, from the peach-coloured curtains to the collection of well-scrubbed and combed grandchildren whose portraits decorated the light-green walls. There was however a glaring surplus of mahogany, which the Countess found unbecoming, yes, ugly actually, although it was intended to be pretty.

Madame received her from the Biedermeier chaise-longue where she was reclining when her guest arrived. She did not get up, but was content to extend a limp, white hand in welcome and straighten herself up a little from her couch. She was a small, almost fragile woman in her late fifties, well-dressed in a modern, grey tailor-made suit and with an artfully draped white shawl around her spindly shoulders. Her face looked tired, mouth hanging partway open; only her glass-clear, sparkling eyes made an impression. She did not use makeup or wear any jewellery it seemed. The Countess sat down in a chair opposite her. The woman said, “You are busy, you have a meeting later this evening.”

Her voice was oddly flat and almost without intonation, as if she was reporting a series of numbers. The Countess asked sceptically, “Is that something you see?”

“It is something I know. Konrad just called. Apparently you turned off your cell phone. You should be back at Police Headquarters by seven-thirty and certainly no later than quarter to eight. I promised to give you the message.”

“Thanks, that was good of you.”

“This is the first time you’ve been here, and I sense in you a certain distrust of my abilities. That doesn’t matter, it’s how it usually is with newcomers. Basically it’s healthy. A person must be uncommonly gullible not to doubt me to begin with.”

The Countess did not really know what to say to that. She was content to shrug her shoulders and hold up her hands in mock surrender. She was privately sure that the woman always used this self-deprecating introductory speech. Anyway she had a little account to settle now that she was here. She asked, “A few days ago you insisted on the phone that I should hold on tight to Steen Hansen, as you put it. What good would that do?”

“How in the world should I know? But you have obviously encountered a person by that name, I see?”

“It’s a very common name.”

The other woman did not conceal her irritation. The Countess met her eyes with scepticism in her own. They sat that way for a few seconds, staring each other down, until Madame said, “Today you have told a secret to the one you love. You regret having done that. He loves you too, but you can’t really work that out together. You’re like the old joke about how porcupines mate. The punch line is: very, very carefully. Well, shall we get started? What do you have for me?”

The Countess felt anger rise inside her and restrained herself only with great difficulty. She felt exposed. Her mouth tightened, and her eyes narrowed. Only then did she discover that her doubt about this woman’s supernatural talents had suddenly shrunk considerably. Silently she produced from her bag Jeanette Hvidt’s scarf and a belt that belonged to Pauline Berg, and handed them over. She asked, “What should I do?”

“Listen.”

“May I speak to you while you are in trance?”

“I am not in a trance, and of course you may. I can always ask you to be quiet if you are disturbing me.”

The Countess nodded. How hard could it be? It was nothing more than a very ordinary chat with the dead. With each hand Madame rubbed the belt and the scarf in turn between her fingers, while she looked around the room. Shortly after that she said, “There is a woman who was killed in a bookshop.”

She said the sentence declaratively and completely without reflection over its odd meaning.

“And another woman who has been a ballerina. Several women… all of them women. The two you are seeking are in a… ”

She hesitated and rubbed again; shortly after that she continued.

“I am sensing a white chapel, but something is wrong. Jeanette and Pauline are in a white chapel. They are together, and they are alive. There is something about bombs… the chapel has been bombed I think, during the war. It’s gone. A Cockney knee trembler for fourpence… back then the neighbourhood was poor, today it’s affluent. I see expensive glass facades, but that makes no sense to me. I also perceive that there is a name coincidence, something or other, that gets mixed up, some roots… around the chapel and in relation to some girls’ names… diabolical delusions. Yes, now a man is coming. Ugh, he is repulsive, definitely one of the worst I have encountered. He is both very well-known and completely unknown. The others disappear, they don’t want to be with him. So now we might just as well stop.”

Madame set down the objects. The Countess was deeply disappointed.

“Was that it?”

“Yes, you should look for a white chapel or a crypt. The two women are there.”

“Why did you stop?”

“He did not want to help, it was quite obvious.”

The Countess made a resigned gesture and then asked Madame a series of clarifying questions about the mysterious white chapel. With no further result. For want of anything better she returned to the man who had obviously scared the other spirits away.

“Why can’t you use him?”

The woman stared out into space and let her eyes run appraisingly up and down, as if she was looking at her own reflection. Then she concluded firmly, “No, he is evil.”

“Is he still there? Or whatever you say.”

“Yes, and I’m sure I’ll have a lot of trouble with him. He is not the type you can get rid of easily.”

“Couldn’t you try to speak… sense him anyway?”

“Yes, if you wish, but no good will come of it.”

This time she was content to touch the objects fleetingly. For a while she said nothing, then she said, “He has rattled off a poem. A vulgar poem… what is it they’re called? Oh, well, a hateful, mean satirical song, which he maintains is about him. It’s hard to understand, old-fashioned and not Danish. There was a politician, who saved a prostitute, and then otherwise it’s like the children’s song with the ten little Indians who get fewer and fewer. I think anyway. He has killed someone, there is no doubt about that. Let’s stop here.”

“No, keep going.”

The woman took a fountain pen and a pad from the coffee table and started writing. When she was finished, she said definitely, “Now we’re done.”

“What does it say?”

“A rhyme: it is the last four lines of his old poem, which is rewritten. Or perhaps translated, I couldn’t work that out. He wants to be in the newspapers again.”

“A rhyme to whom?”

“To you, but I don’t think you should read it. It won’t be of any help and will only do you harm.”

The Countess ignored the warning and reached for the pad. Madame handed it over without further objection and Pauline read:

Two little girls tremble with fear,

Child laughs in the dust with his catch so dear.

First girl in the bag, and the other is alone,

The one without curls will die as skin and bone.

Loathing struck the Countess then, and for a few seconds she gasped for air. She quickly got hold of herself again, sufficiently in balance to receive Madame’s toneless instructions.

“You are stubborn, the nobility often are. Now you will reap what you have sown. But sometimes stubbornness can be an advantage. You will experience that this evening.”

The drive from Høje Taastrup to Søllerød did the Countess good. The metaphysical encounter had not been pleasant, and she was happy to escape from the strange couple. She had little to show for her visit in investigative terms. She called Simonsen and, when she did not get through, left a message about Madame’s white chapel on his answering machine, happy that it was not up to her whether the information should be taken seriously or not. The rest of the way she tried to shake off the memory of the other things she had experienced by letting Bob Marley blow her head clear at full blast.

At home she emptied the mailbox and dumped the bundle of advertising directly into the rubbish bin before she went in. The rest, three letters and a package, she tossed on the kitchen table when she was inside, after which she put on coffee, watered her flowers and quickly packed clothing for herself and Simonsen. After lugging the suitcase to the back of her car she returned to the kitchen. The coffeemaker was still gurgling, and she thought she would either have to buckle down and decalcify it or else buy a new one. While she was waiting she browsed indifferently in her mail.

The letter on top was a statement from one of her banks; she threw that out. The next was a parking ticket, and she remembered that her windscreen wipers had dispatched the first copy on to the street; she was indifferent to that as well. The last letter was a bill from her private detective for ten pictures she had already received by email. She did not bother to open that either. The package remained. In the mailbox it had been under a home-delivered Sunday paper and therefore might have come by courier on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning. No sender or recipient address was given, and with a feeling of paranoid suspicion she balanced it in her hands a short while, after which she tore it open.

The book was new, as if it came straight from the printer. The dust jacket showed a bluish-grey Boeing B-52 bomber hovering over a desert of ice, elegant and at the same time powerful with its slender fuselage and the gigantic V-shaped wings, each carrying four potent jet engines. Title and author were printed in capital letters and hatched in the colours of the American flag. On Guard in the North by Clark Atkinson. She opened it to page one and noted that her present was a copy of the very rare first edition from 1983. The non-existent edition. To top it off, it came with a personal greeting from Helmer Hammer. Freehand and not without talent, the under secretary had sketched a pair of magnolias, heavy with flowers, as they appeared in early June. Behind these a few strokes suggested the geometry of the Palm House. The message was brief and personal: Dear Countess, I certainly owe you a lot of G. Best, Helmer. For good measure the G was embellished with a pair of eyes on its lower curve, so that it resembled a smiley face.

Under normal circumstances she would be happy, both with the book and this acknowledgment from the under secretary. But these circumstances were not normal, far from it. Her odyssey into recent Danish history seemed very far off and had no significance now. She squeezed Hammer’s present in among her cookbooks, poured coffee into a vacuum jug, looked at her clock and left. To begin with, however, she travelled only a short way up the street, where she stopped parallel to a parked blue Renault and rolled down her window. The driver of the other car did the same while he put a finger to his lips and then indicated behind him towards his female partner, who was sleeping in the back seat. The Countess knew him in passing, but could not remember his name. She handed over the vacuum jug and two mugs to him. He took them, whispering, “You are an angel.”

“How long are you on duty?”

“Don’t know, the plan has not quite fallen into place, but a long time. We’ve only been here a couple of hours.”

“Lousy job to be ordered out to.”

“It’s voluntary now, but it doesn’t matter. Just be sure to catch that mass murderer, and find his hostages alive.”

The Countess promised to do as he asked. Just!