Free The Killing Forest by Sara Blædel Page A

back,” Ernst said.
    Lissy nodded. “You did. After he was sure you weren’t going to raise a fuss.”
    “We don’t know that,” he said, shaking his head at her. “That’s why you’re better off keeping your suspicions to yourself. We don’t know anything. We’re guessing.”
    “No,” his wife said. “We’re putting two and two together; that’s something else entirely.”
    “We won’t know anything unless one of them starts talking,” Ernst said. “And none of them will. They don’t dare.”
    Lissy folded her hands in her lap and slumped in her chair. Louise felt she had to say something. That she had reopened old wounds, and what for? For her own sake. She leaned forward.
    “If you’re talking about Big Thomsen and his crowd, I promise I’ll do everything in my power to get René Gamst to talk. And if there’s anything we don’t know about Klaus’s death, I will dig it up.”
    She got up and gave both of them a hug.
    *  *  *
    Five minutes later Louise stood out on Skovvej, trying to remember precisely what she had told Klaus’s parents she would do. All she could think of was the trail of death Big Thomsen’s gang seemed to leave behind them. A shadowy and vague trail. Her teeth were chattering, even though the June sun still stood high in the sky.
    She headed to the station to take the train back to Copenhagen, but the thought of walking down the main street of town exhausted her. Instead she began walking toward the old sports complex.
    Why had he never told her about the debt? Louise formed the words on her lips: Klaus owed money to Thomsen. A debt she’d known nothing about, but which hung around even after he’d paid it off.
    She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment, imagining the old farmhouse out in Kisserup. The rafters under the ceiling, the doorways that Klaus had to duck his head to get through.
    How many had there been in the house that night?
    Feeling weak in the knees, she dragged herself over to a boulder at the end of the street and sat down.
    The images kept popping up. She knew she should be focusing on the missing boy, because there was nothing she wanted more than to see Jane reunited with her son. The smartest thing by far to do right now was to take the train back to the city. To Eik.
    She snatched up her bag and was about to loop it over her shoulder when she realized that all this wasn’t about her sorrow and shattered emotions. An anger was building up inside her, so black that she had to do something about it.
    She made her decision. She would find Jane’s son, but if anyone had been involved in Klaus’s death, she would find them, too.

12
    C amilla turned onto Skovvej and immediately slowed down. Even at this distance, she recognized her friend sitting on a boulder, her long, black hair whipping in the wind.
    “It’s so good to see you again!” she said when Louise got in the car. “Can you spend the night with us?”
    Camilla had been surprised when her friend had called, wanting to know if she could pick her up in Hvalsø. Frederik had gone to Copenhagen—he was bringing dinner back—and she had just sat down to work on an article due the next day.
    She had covered a pony show at the Roskilde Riding Club that weekend. Her former editor at Morgenavisen , Terkel Høyer, would die laughing if he knew what she was writing about as a freelancer. And when Louise called, she decided that the piece wouldn’t suffer one bit if she waited until early the next morning to write it.
    She turned the car around in a neatly kept driveway to head back to Roskilde.
    “Would you mind driving me to Holbæk?” Louise asked.
    “Holbæk! What on earth for?”
    “I need to stop by the jail.”
    “The jail! Why?” She drove down the main street and under the viaduct. Louise didn’t answer.
    “An interrogation?” Camilla asked. Still no answer. She was used to this; she had covered crime for Morgenavisen while Louise had been in Homicide. Some things they