Free The Forgotten Girls by Sara Blædel Page B

helpful.”
    “After all, it’s almost unbearable to think that the next of kin should find out about the death from the media,” the woman continued.
    Louise was well aware that you could not hand over confidential information even to the police, but in this case she did not see how it could do much harm, and was pleased to have found someone open to reason. And pleasant to deal with, as well.
    “Follow me,” the woman said, walking to the stairs, which continued down to the basement. “It’s a bit chilly down there and if you don’t have enough light to read in the archives, just go ahead and bring the files up here.”
    Louise had no intention of bringing anything back upstairs for fear of running into the shrew, who might throw a wrench in the works before they had a chance to obtain the information they needed.
    “I’m sure it’ll be fine and we’ll be out of your hair soon,” she said quickly. To her satisfaction she saw that Eik had already pulled a notepad from the inside pocket of his leather jacket.
    A row of wooden doors with heavy iron fittings ran the length of the wide basement hallway on both sides, and the ceiling was high enough for them to walk upright without difficulty—even Eik, who had to be around six feet. The air smelled damp and musty, and it didn’t look as if the basement was used for anything but storage. Passing by the open rooms, they saw several beds with buckles and straps as well as an old dentist’s chair, which had been fitted to immobilize the patient’s arms and legs.
    “I know—it gives you the chills just thinking about the torment that’s been suffered in that chair,” the woman said, having turned around. “I’ve been told that the dentist who looked after the residents’ teeth here didn’t use any anesthetic. Instead he just tied down his patients before he got started.”
    Louise shook her head.
    They took a right at the end of the hallway and continued down yet another long corridor.
    “The archives are down there at the end. It’s actually several rooms that have been combined into one,” the woman informed them. She explained that this part of the basement had at one point been used as a separate sick ward “for those patients who couldn’t be controlled without tying and who needed to be in isolation for a short time to avoid contagion.”
    Louise shuddered and thought for a moment that she could still sense a little of the spirit from that time. But most likely it was only because the moisture made the air stagnant, she thought.
    “Here.” The woman opened a door and showed them into a large room with shelves from floor to ceiling. “You’ll find the years marked under the volumes.”
    She had turned on the ceiling light and was pointing to some white labels affixed to the front side of the shelves.
    “The old institution had a bed capacity of three hundred, but additional beds were often set up so there’d be upward of four hundred patients at a time,” she told them. “As you can see, a lot of destinies have passed through here over the years.”
    Louise looked around. All along one wall, patient records were crammed together so tightly that she could barely make out the dusty green backs of the individual files. They all ranged from 1930 to 1960. On the next shelves, the records had been placed in beige files and spanned the next decade until1970. Louise walked over to a slightly smaller bookcase behind the door and found that it was for the residents who were born in the last ten years of the institution, from 1970 to 1980. Some of them must have still been quite young when Eliselund closed down, she thought.
    “Here it is,” Eik said, pointing to an index tab projecting between the beige files. “Nineteen sixty-two.”
    Louise walked over and stood next to him to see. He had started pulling out files one by one in order to read the white label on each front page.
    “Wouldn’t it be easier if you take them out?” she suggested.