He ran his fingers through his hair distractedly. “I can’t believe you’re saying this.”
“I reserved a ticket for you. You can pick it up at the box office.”
“I’m not going.”
“Don’t be so grumpy! We can fly tomorrow night, after I dance. The ballet isn’t on again for another week after that, and one of the other two is sure to be better by then.”
“I don’t care about the damn ballet-what about the war? Heis reckoned the RAF must be planning a massive air raid. They need our photographs before then! Think of the lives at stake!”
She sighed, and her voice softened. “I knew you would feel this way, and I thought about forgoing the opportunity, but I just can’t. Anyway, if we fly tomorrow, we’ll be in England three days before the full moon.”
“But we’ll be in deadly danger here for an extra twenty-four hours!”
“Look, no one knows about this plane-why would they find out tomorrow?”
“It’s possible.”
“Oh, don’t be so childish, anything’s
“Childish? The police are looking for me, you know that. I’m a fugitive and I want to get out of this country as soon as I can.”
Now she was getting angry. “You really ought to understand how I feel about this performance.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Look, I might die in this damn plane.”
“So might I.”
“While I’m drowning in the North Sea, or freezing to death on your makeshift raft, I’d like to be able to think that before I died I achieved my life’s ambition, and danced wonderfully on the stage of the Royal Danish Theatre in front of the King. Can’t you understand that?”
“No, I can’t!”
“Then you can go to hell,” she said, and she went out through the window.
Harald stared after her. He was thunderstruck. A minute passed before he moved. Then he looked inside the basket she had brought. There were two bottles of mineral water, a packet of crackers, a flashlight, a spare battery, and two spare bulbs. There were no maps, but she had put in an old school atlas. He picked up the book and opened it. On the endpaper was written, in a girlish hand, “Karen Duchwitz, Class 3.”
“Oh, hell,” he said.
28
Peter Flemming stood on the quay at Morlunde, watching the last ferry of the day come in from Sande, waiting for a mystery woman.
He had been disappointed, though not really surprised, that Harald had not shown up yesterday for his brother’s funeral. Peter had carefully scrutinized all the mourners. Most were islanders whom Peter had known since childhood. It was the others who interested him. After the service, taking tea in the parsonage, he had spoken to all the strangers. There were a couple of old school pals, some army buddies, friends from Copenhagen, and the headmaster of Jansborg Skole. He had ticked their names on the list given him by the policeman on the ferry. And he noticed one name not ticked: Miss Agnes Ricks.
Returning to the ferry dock, he had asked the policeman if Agnes Ricks had gone back to the mainland. “Not yet,” the man had said. “I’d remember her. She’s a bit of all right.” He grinned and cupped his hands over his chest to signify large breasts.
Peter had gone to his father’s hotel and learned that no Agnes Ricks had checked in.
He was intrigued. Who was Miss Ricks and what was she doing? Instinct told him she had some connection with Arne Olufsen. Perhaps it was wishful thinking. But she was the only lead he had.
He was too conspicuous loitering at the quay on Sande, so he crossed to the mainland and made himself unobtrusive at the large commercial harbor there. However, Miss Ricks did not appear. Now, as the ferry docked for the last time until morning, Peter retired to the Oesterport Hotel.
There was a phone in a little booth in the hotel lobby, and he used it to call Tilde Jespersen at home in Copenhagen.
“Was Harald at the funeral?” she said immediately.
“No.”
“Damn.”
“I checked out the mourners. No clues there. But there’s one more lead I’m following up, a Miss Agnes Ricks. What about you?”
“I’ve spent the day on the phone to local police stations all over the country. I’ve got men checking on each of Harald’s classmates. I should hear from all of them tomorrow.”
“You walked off the job,” he said with an abrupt change of subject.
“It wasn’t a normal job, though, was it?” She was obviously prepared for this.
“Why not?”
“You took me because you wanted to sleep with me.”
Peter ground his teeth. He had compromised his own professionalism by having sex with her, and now he could not admonish her. Angrily, he said, “Is that your excuse?”
“It’s not an excuse.”
“You said you disliked the way I interrogated the Olufsens. That’s not a reason for a police officer to run away.”
“I didn’t run away from the job. I just didn’t want to sleep with a man who could do that.”
“I was just doing my duty!”
Her voice changed. “Not quite.”
“What do you mean?”
“It would be all right if you had been tough just for the sake of getting the job done. I could respect that. But you liked what you were doing. You tortured the pastor and bullied his wife, and you enjoyed it. Their grief gave you satisfaction. I can’t get into bed with a man like that.”
Peter hung up.
He spent much of the night awake, thinking about Tilde. Lying in bed, angry with her, he imagined himself slapping her. He would have liked to go to her apartment, and pull her out of bed in her nightgown, and punish her. In his fantasy she pleaded for mercy, but he ignored her cries. Her gown became torn in the struggle, and he became aroused and raped her. She screamed and fought him off, but he held her down. Afterward, she begged forgiveness with tears in her eyes, but he left her without a word.
Eventually he fell asleep.
In the morning he went to the dock to meet the first ferry from Sande. He looked hopefully at the salt-caked boat as it steamed into the dock. Agnes Ricks was his only hope. If she turned out to be innocent, he was not sure what to do next.
A handful of passengers disembarked. Peter’s plan had been to ask the policeman if one of them was Miss Ricks, but there was no need. He immediately noticed, among the men in work clothes headed for the early shift at the cannery, a tall woman wearing sunglasses and a head scarf. As she came closer, he realized he knew her. He saw black hair escaping from under the scarf, but it was the large, curved nose that gave her away. She walked with a confident, mannish stride, he observed, and he remembered noticing that gait when he first met her, two years ago.
She was Hermia Mount.
She looked thinner and older than the woman who had been introduced as Arne Olufsen’s fiancee back in 1939, but Peter had no doubt.
“You treacherous bitch, I’ve got you,” he said with profound satisfaction.
Anxious that she might recognize him, he put on heavy-rimmed glasses and pulled his hat forward to cover the distinctive red of his hair. Then he followed her to the station, where she bought a ticket to Copenhagen.
After a long wait they boarded an old, slow, coal-burning train that meandered across Denmark from west to
