13

“WE’RE GOING FISHING,” MARKUS BRAGGED AS HE BOUNDED out of the car into the yard.

Louise’s mother came out to welcome them. Peter walked over and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

“Hey, you!” Louise’s father called from the farmhouse. She waved at him and gave her mother a hug.

Her parents had traded in their apartment in Copenhagen for an old rundown country house before Louise and her brother started at the local elementary school. Now it was hard to imagine that her parents had ever been city dwellers, and it was perfectly all right with Louise that they had continued to live in the country. Once in a while she would get an intense urge to sit out in the yard under the enormous apple tree and walk through the fields, which were surrounded by woods. On the other hand, she had a hard time imagining that she would ever move to such a rural area, even though the landscape had become a part of her and filled her with an inner peace so pronounced that she noticed the change the second she stepped out into the yard. She took a deep breath of the fresh air and started carrying their bags in from the car.

“How’re you guys doing?” Her father asked the first question as they sat down around the garden furniture on the patio. Louise smiled and contemplated her parents. Everything was as usual. She sighed contentedly and dragged her chair over into the sun. From out in the yard, she could hear Markus mowing some grass with the ancient manual lawnmower. It always amazed her that children were so willing to push it back and forth. She herself would do anything to get out of it.

“The kids won’t be here until around five thirty,” her mother announced, “so you guys can enjoy a little peace and quiet before the tornados arrive.”

Thank God, Louise thought. Her two godchildren really could wreak havoc on a place. She had teased Mikkel and Trine many times, saying that just because there was a lot of space available, that didn’t mean they should raise their kids to use every last inch of it. She meant that in all seriousness, but either they thought she was joking, or they refused to see the problem. Instead, they always got back at her by asking if she and Peter were going to have any children, and the conversation always ground to a halt right there.

Peter had an easier time finding things to talk to Louise’s brother and sister-in-law about. After dinner, he asked with interest how things were going with their house, but by that point Louise had already disappeared into the kitchen to start cleaning up and making coffee. She was so rarely in the mood to listen to her brother and his wife talk about their staid life and big circle of friends, with one social event after another. On the other hand, this never bothered Peter. He took the whole thing in stride, and even remembered whatever they had told him the last time they were together. She smiled at him as he sat there nodding at whatever her sister-in-law was saying. It wasn’t until they stood up to say good-bye two hours later that she realized it had actually ended up being quite a pleasant evening.

Markus was sleeping, so she persuaded Peter to join her for a moonlit stroll through the woods. It was extremely dark out, except for the bright moonlight that filtered down through the trees and lit up the paths so they could find their way. It was still too early in the year for warm summer evenings, and before they made it back to the house the cold had crept through her clothes so she sped up a little when she saw the light from the windows.

“Don’t you think we should buy a vacation house?” Peter suggested as they turned into the yard.

She stopped, surprised. They had talked about a lot of things for their future, but this one was new. She tried picturing herself as the owner of a vacation house, but she wasn’t wild about the image that came up.

“I don’t really think I’m cut out for that,” she said, but she couldn’t tell whether he was seriously considering the idea or whether it was just a whim, so she hastened to add that they might consider getting onto the national forest agency waiting list and hope to be picked for one of the old gamekeepers’ cottages. That would be a little more her style: more land and not so stereotypical.

The gravel on the path through the yard crunched under their feet as they walked hand in hand. Peter was looking up at the stars, seemingly not listening to what she said. So much for that idea, she thought, squeezing his hand.

Up in their room, Louise dutifully checked her cell phone when it fell to the floor as she searched for her pajamas.

The screen said eight missed calls. The phone had been in her bag with the ringer off since Friday night when she had done her packing, and she had forgotten to switch it back on. She sat on the edge of her bed and pulled up the missed-calls list. One call from Camilla; the rest were from police headquarters. Fuck, she thought, dialing up to retrieve her voice messages, a sense of anxiety spreading through every cell in her body.

Heilmann had left the first message about quarter to five on Saturday afternoon. After that there were two more messages from Heilmann’s cell, and the rest were from Lars. In Heilmann’s last message at eight thirty, she asked Louise to call the next morning. No hint about what was going on, just that short message.

Heilmann’s irritation was clear in her voice. There was noise in the background, but not enough to tell where she was calling from. Louise looked at the clock; it was almost one in the morning. They had sat in the living room with her parents and had a couple of gin-and-tonics after their nighttime stroll. Fuck, she thought again, feeling Peter’s eyes burning into her back. She was still sitting there with her cell phone in her lap.

“That was Heilmann,” she said without turning around. “She’s been trying to get ahold of me since this afternoon.”

“You’re off. They can’t expect that you sit around waiting for them to call all the time. You know that,” Peter said, defending her. “If you’re off duty, you’re off duty!”

“Yeah, but they ought to be able to reach me if something happens.”

They did not call her this way very often, but it did happen. And anytime she wasn’t one of the first ones to come running back into work, she felt instantly guilty—even though it was perfectly legitimate for her not to have been home.

“They’ll manage,” Peter said, yawning. “I’m sure she would’ve called twice as many times if she hadn’t managed to get someone else.”

Louise tossed the phone back in her bag and climbed into bed. The feeling of relaxation was gone. They both knew that she would get up early and be ready to leave as soon as she had spoken with Heilmann. She took a deep breath before she snuggled up to Peter and started to gently nibble his ear. He lay as stiff as a board as she tried to get the warmth from her body to spread to him. Her tongue had slid down and started tickling his neck before he gave in and pulled her close to him so their bodies melted together. It had been a long time since they’d made love. She hadn’t thought about it before, but quickly calculated that it must have been almost a month since the last time. That’s too long, she told herself as she let the pleasure carry her away.