Bo Michaëlis - Copenhagen Noir

“Lille Istedgade?” I said, and he took my tone of voice in such a way that he quickly added, “Yes, but Istedgade isn’t like it used to be.”

“No?”

“Not at all.”

In many ways he was right. True, the street still had a porno shop or two, and a few of the girls strolling the sidewalk in what seemed to be a casual manner wore conspiculously short skirts for November. The long look I got from one of them told me that I could warm myself up with her if I was cold.

Nonetheless, there was a shined-up look to the street that hadn’t been there in 1985, and when I got to the address Christian Mogensen had given me, a side street to Sønder Boulevard, the building proved to be newly renovated, the stairway nice and clean, and the list of tenants in the vestibule indicated that it was an apartment building. The left-hand apartment on the fourth floor-the one Mogensen had told me to go to-was apparently unoccupied. At least there was no name on the list.

On the way up I met a couple descending the stairs. The woman was blond, with hair pulled back severely and gathered in a knot. She wore an elegant dark-blue coat and carried a small black envelope purse in her gloved hand. She stared straight ahead, not looking in my direction. Her companion did, however: a broad-shouldered man with short dark hair, in a black winter coat and dark pants. The look he sent me was angry and hostile, as if he were saying: Try taking her away from me, if you dare…

For a moment or two I considered whether the building might be something other than what it seemed, perhaps a refuge for sadomasochists or some other crazy group. Then they passed by me, leaving behind only the reek of her strong perfume. I assumed it was hers, but you can never be sure. Not nowadays.

No one opened when I rang at the fourth-floor door that had no tenant name. I tried several times, and the doorbell could be heard all the way out in the hall, but there was no reaction from inside. I studied the door. It was made of solid, heavy wood, and the lock seemed secure, not one you could work open with a hairpin and a credit card.

I grabbed my phone, called Mogensen again, and gave him my sob story.

“Well, she’s just out somewhere,” he said.

“Then I’ll pay you a visit instead.”

“No, no. Wait right there, Veum, I’ll come to you.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Less than a half hour. Get a cup of coffee in the meantime.”

I walked back to Istedgade, found a café on a corner, noticed the woman with the encouraging look at one of the tables but didn’t accept the invitation this time, either. I sat at the bar on a stool high enough to keep an eye on the entrance to the building I had just left, and I ordered a cup of black coffee and a Brøndums aquavit, the closest I could come to a Simers Taffel south of the Skagerrak.

After twenty-five minutes a black Mercedes pulled up and a man got out. He was tall and somewhat rangy, with red-blond hair and a beard. He looked around before crossing the street and entering the building.

I emptied my glass, nodded at the waitress, and followed him.

I stood in the hallway and listened. At first I heard nothing. Then a door slammed, followed by hurried footsteps down the stairs.

When he reached bottom he met my gaze. Now I recognized him. His hair was shorter, beard neat and well-trimmed, and he was distinctly better-dressed than the last time we’d met. But it was the same man I had found her with in Christiania twenty-three years earlier.

His voice shook when he said, “Veum?”

“That’s me. What’s going on?”

Before he could answer, his phone rang. He put it to his ear, and as he listened he gradually grew paler. “But… but you can’t…” He glanced up the stairway, as if he expected someone to come after him any second. “Yeah… all right, I’m coming. Track seven.”

Then he lowered the phone and looked at me again. His expression was darker than the night, it was as if someone had poured poison in his ear. “I have to go.”

“I’m going with you.”

He looked like he was going to object, but just shrugged his shoulders. We went out to the sidewalk. He walked past his car without a glance.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“Central Station. Track seven.”

“And what’s going to happen?”

“We’re going to meet them.”

“Who?” Impatient, I grabbed his arm. “Heidi?”

He jerked loose from my grip and looked at me, his despair about to flow over. The darkness surrounding us had settled over Copenhagen. At the end of Istedgade rose Central Station, its steep gable like some heathen house of God. The wind that hit us came from frozen outposts. It was no merry evening in the King’s Copenhagen-or was it the Queen’s nowadays?

“No,” he snapped. “Svanhild.”

He rushed toward Central Station, and I did what I could to keep pace.

No more was said. At the street’s end we walked directly in through the nearest entrance and bolted up the steps to the main hall, where Christian Mogensen made a beeline for the stairs to track seven. I followed.

The tracks at Copenhagen’s Central Station lie in an excavated area underneath. On track seven, it was announced that an intercity train to Ǻrhus-Struer was arriving in five minutes. Mogensen ran down the steps as if the train was pulling out right in front of him. Without any hesitation I followed at his heels.

The platform was packed, but Mogensen shoved his way through until it thinned out in the crowd of travelers standing with suitcases and other luggage, ready to board as soon as the train pulled in.

They stood waiting for us at the far end of the platform, the blond woman and the broad-shouldered man I had met in the hallway an hour earlier. Mogensen stopped a few meters from them and stood with arms hanging, gasping for air. I stayed behind but off to one side of him for a clear view.

A few tracks away, an S train was headed out to the suburbs, maybe up to what Copenhageners called the “whiskey belt.” No one here on the platform at track seven was indulging in whiskey. But the looks they exchanged were as cold as ice cubes.

The woman I gathered to be Svanhild twisted her lips into the sourest smile I’d seen since Maggie Thatcher. “What’s wrong, darling?” she said to Mogensen.

“You’re both crazy! Was he the one who did it?”

The broad-shouldered man took a few steps to the side and raised his arm like a gunman before the last shootout. He nodded in my direction. “Who’s this clown?”

Mogensen turned halfway around, as if he’d forgotten that I had followed him. Then he pulled out his cell phone and held it in front of them. “I’m calling the police! I am-right now!”

“Remember to give them your confession,” Svanhild said, with an evil smile. “They’ll find your DNA when they test the sperm in her vagina. You gave me a nice-sized quantity of it this morning, have you forgotten? You didn’t say no, even when the gorgeous love of your life was waiting on Lille Istedgade—”

“You don’t mean—”

“A trip to the bathroom and a quick drain into a little bottle. That’s all it took. But we also grabbed a few hairs from your brush just to be safe and laid them on her pillow.”

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. “What are we talking about here? You’re not saying that—”

Mogensen turned to me again, his face as white as a sheet. “They killed her. That woman there-that evil woman, my wife-she couldn’t let me live with another woman. The one I’ve wanted so much all these years.” He turned back to Svanhild. “Why didn’t you take me instead?”

I was inclined to believe him. Her smile was more evil than that of the queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.