Free The Forgotten Girls by Sara Blædel Page A

closed-down white buildings of the institution stood out like abandoned giants. The large structures formed a square around a courtyard in the center with several smaller buildings behind them. It must have all been enclosed by a tallwall, Louise thought, stopping on the hilltop to take in the old home. The remains of the peeling brickwork still bounded the area.
    Cars were parked on one side of the courtyard, and from the hilltop it was easy to see which building housed the day center. The main building was freshly limed and the plinth glistened black, in sharp contrast with the rest of the buildings, which appeared to be abandoned.
    Louise drove slowly down the hill.
    “At least she grew up in beautiful surroundings,” Eik noted as they continued through a gate that reminded Louise of Vestre Prison. It was the same kind of impressive red-brick arch; less pronounced, but knowing what had once been here it was nonetheless reminiscent of entering a prison.
    “Yes,” she conceded as she pulled in to park alongside the wall across from the main entrance. “It looks like the residents must have been completely isolated from the rest of the community, though.”
    Eik nodded. “I suppose they were locked up in this area,” he said, looking around as they stood in the courtyard.
    The place had a depressing effect, as if the past still clung to the battered walls of the abandoned buildings.
    There was no doorbell by the entrance to the day center so they let themselves in and immediately heard people talking.
    Louise walked in a bit farther to look around. They had entered a long hall with framed photographs of the place as it looked in the past. On the opposite wall was a row of portraits with small brass signs underneath: the consulting doctors for the institution through the years.
    “Are you looking for someone?” a voice sounded suddenly from above.
    Louise hadn’t noticed the stairs to the left of the front door.
    “Yes,” she answered and waited as an elderly lady with straight gray hair and a welcoming smile descended the stairs. Definitely not the unnecessarily difficult woman on the phone.
A good start
, Louise thought.
    Eik stepped forward to shake her hand while he explained who they were, and that they had called, were told the archives and records were kept either on-site or in the museum, and that they could come in to discuss gaining access.
    “We would really like to see your old yearbooks.” Louise took over, explaining that they had an unidentified woman who now turned out to have possibly stayed at Eliselund as a child.
    “I saw the notice in the paper,” she said. “Do you think she might have been a patient here?”
    “We were contacted by someone who used to work here at Eliselund.” Louise told her that the former care assistant thought she recognized the distinctive scar. “We would really like to get in touch with the deceased’s next of kin. We were hoping that you might help us find her civil registration number so we can locate her family.”
    The woman seemed to give their request some thought before weighing in. “I believe the yearbooks were mostly used to document full occupancy to the Care Division. They don’t say anything about the family relationships of the patients. That’s only in the patient records.”
    “And they’re in the museum?” Louise asked.
    The lady smiled and shook her head. “Only the patient records for the groups from the middle of the last century are displayed over there. The rest of them are archived in the basement.”
    Louise sighed. “I wonder if you’d be kind enough to take a moment and check whether the file we’re looking for can be procured?” she asked. “I have a first name and a year.”
    The woman waved them along. “I can’t see that it would be a problem if you want to just go down to the basement yourselves and look through the records from that year. As long as you don’t remove them.”
    “That would be very