to know anything about us as long as Marcus was living with him. Sometimes I got the feeling that he was afraid of that officer. He often said, ‘He’s almost worse than my doctor in Goteborg.’ ”
“Wait a second! Did he really say ‘worse than my doctor in Goteborg’?”
“Yes. Word for word and on several occasions. I read it as though the officer and the doctor were jealous. Maybe of each other. But maybe Marcus meant something else.”
The officer and the doctor had shown up again. But Carmen Ostergaard was a woman and Marcus a man. Was it the same officer and doctor? A coincidence? How did all of this fit together?
“Do you know the officer’s name?” Irene asked.
“No. He didn’t want to tell me. ‘You would be surprised. It’s best that you don’t know,’ he said when I asked. But one time it slipped out that the officer had a connection to Vesterbro. ‘We have to be cautious,’ he said.”
“You got the impression that the officer worked in this district?”
Tanaka considered. “I don’t remember every word. But that he had some connection here was very clear.”
“Do you know where the officer lives?”
“No. Just that it was somewhere around the Botanical Gardens.”
“Do you know how old Marcus was?”
“Thirty-one.”
“Do you know anything about his family and friends in Goteborg?”
“No. Nothing. We talked about almost everything but that.”
“What did you talk about?”
“We had a lot of things in common. Trips, for example. Marcus loved to travel. We had talked about going to Japan in the fall. . ”
Tanaka interrupted himself and stood abruptly. He said, “Here is my cell phone number. Only a handful of people have this number. You can reach me around the clock. Call immediately if there’s anything you can tell me.”
Irene took the note. Tanaka bowed to her and she bowed back. She appreciated the respect and trust Tom Tanaka was showing her.
He led her though the small corridor and into a huge bedroom. The scent of expensive male cologne was prevalent. The room was dominated by a huge bed without covers, made up with black silk sheets. The walls were white plastered and displayed two large framed photographs. Both were studies in black and white of naked young men. On one of the walls there was a door. Irene noticed that it was supplied with both a keypad lock and a heavy-duty burglarproof lock. Tanaka unlocked both locks and opened the door. Behind it there was a little landing and a flight of narrow stone steps.
“If you need to meet with me, call me. We’ll make an appointment and I’ll open the door for you.”
Again they bowed to each other. Irene pushed the glowing button for the stairwell lighting and went down the little half flight of stairs. She opened a door to a small, dark courtyard. The smell of food from a restaurant on the other side of it was nauseating, as was the odor rising from the piles of trash lying against the wall. The scratching and rustling from inside the piles implied that there were inhabitants of the trash pile who were happily living the good life.
As Irene hurried across the courtyard toward the entrance to the street, she saw ashes from a cigarette float to the ground.
Someone was standing just inside the doorway.
She turned around but the door she had used to enter the courtyard had locked behind her. The restaurant didn’t have a back door. She would have to confront the person who was waiting in the darkness. She didn’t know if the person was armed, but would have to assume so.
She started toward the street entrance. She was close enough to hear suppressed breathing as she passed someone in the shadows. When she was about to take the last step into the street, a man jumped out and stood in front of her, blocking her path. The streetlight outside reflected on a knife blade and glimmered faintly on his shaved head. He had been standing outside; that meant there were two of them.
Without turning her head, Irene shot her arm out to the right like lightning, straight to where she knew the other one had to be standing. She got hold of a thick jacket and pulled so hard that her assailant stumbled in front of her. With a thump, his club hit the wall instead of landing on her head. She quickly changed her hold and took a firm grasp of his neck. She could feel more than see that he also had shaved his head. She rammed it into the stone wall with a hollow thud. He crumpled to the ground with a faint grunt.
The man with the knife stepped over his fallen accomplice. He stood in the dimly lit doorway and made a jab at her stomach with the knife. She blocked this attack and grabbed his wrist. Quickly, she stretched out his right arm and moved in a half circle to the right. With an iron grip she held the arm with the knife straight up and at the same time she aimed a kick at his stomach.
So that he wouldn’t recover his courage and decide to come after her, she aimed a hard kick at his ribs, not to break them but to inflict pain. Based on his scream, he wouldn’t have an interest in pursuing her any time soon. She took the knife with her when she hurried from the scene. The last she heard was one of them wailing in a broad southern Swedish accent, “That was no damn fag!”
“What was it then?” the friend whined.
“Damned if I know!”
Apparently they were two thugs who had ridden the ferry from Sweden to take part in the popular sport of gay bashing. Irene had investigated similar cases a few years before. Some of the victims still had deep scars. She felt satisfied. The knife she had taken from the skinhead turned out to be a stiletto. With a soft click the knife blade slid into the shaft. The weapon fit easily into her pocket.
She jogged up toward Istedgade. If she was going to make it over to Store Kongensgade and visit the girls at Scandinavian Models she was probably best off taking a taxi.
After just a minute or two she found a cab, got in, and caught her breath. When she gave the older taxi driver the address he said, “A whole night out on the town by yourself?”
He could think what he wanted. She looked out the window and pretended not to understand.
It was unbelievably tiring always having to strain to understand Danish, not to mention Tom Tanaka, who spoke to her in English. Until now she had managed pretty well, but it wasn’t always easy. Especially when people spoke Danish quickly.
But Tom Tanaka spoke very good, clear English. Maybe he was extra pedagogic when he was speaking with her. How was it that he, a Japanese, was so fluent in English? At least he seemed to be, to her. Had he lived in the USA? She would have thought someone in his field would have stayed in Japan, where sumo wrestlers were practically treated like gods. Did his leaving there have to do with his sexuality? Possibly.
Finally they had a probable name for the poor victim at Killevik. Marcus Tosscander, thirty-one years old and a designer. It struck her that she had forgotten to ask what he designed, but that would be answered now that they knew his identity.
The two who had attacked her by the doorway-could they have something to do with the investigation? When she thought about it in the peace and quiet of the backseat of the taxi she ruled out that possibility. It was probably a coincidence.
They drove along the wide boulevards, passing brightly lit houses. Her eyelids felt heavy and she realized how tired she was.
The taxi driver signaled and turned over toward the sidewalk. “There. So here we are at the next bit of entertainment,” he said.
“Would you mind waiting with the car? I’m just going in to ask after someone.”
“Yes, but you’ll have to pay for this ride first.”
Irene paid, and the taxi driver promised to wait for five minutes. If she didn’t return by that time, he would leave.
She opened the car door and was just about to step out when she stopped herself and slowly sank back into the half darkness of the car. A man came by, walking briskly and stopped in front of the door to the building where
