Copenhagen Noir - Bo Tao Michaelis [58]
She drooped and went quiet. Tried to recall the image of her mother but could remember only her scream and her frightened eyes.
When her mother entertained customers, Claire had hidden in a cubbyhole behind the clothes hanging in the closet. That evening she’d fallen asleep in the cubbyhole, and when she crawled out the next morning her mother lay cold, dead on the sofa. The needle lay in the ashtray.
Claire was put in an orphanage and later placed with a number of foster homes. She did okay for herself, and had never set foot again in Vesterbro.
John Winther rattled his chains desperately.
She continued: “At first I only thought divorce, but then it hit me: why should I divorce myself from a few billion kroner? A text from ‘the mistress’ gave me the idea. I’ve been waiting for you, waiting for this hour in this room. Before you die, I want you to know that Cindy, the girl you wanted to ship out of the country with a brain hemorrhage, was operated on tonight. She’ll be okay. I’m guessing that the only reason you bought this building was to have easy access to sexual services, and the income from the whores was just a little bonus that in your habitual greed you pocketed. But it’s a lot of money to them, so I plan to pay them back when your estate is settled. Goodbye, John.”
All she had to do was tighten the noose around his neck.
He climaxed as he died.
The next morning, wearing her warm mink, the tall, elegant Claire Winther stood in the airport and waited for her husband. When he didn’t show up on the flight from Rio, she contacted the airline, then the police. She showed them the text message about his arrival and seemed to be on the verge of tears. A few hours later it was discovered that he had arrived the previous day.
At approximately the same time, the police were notified of a brothel customer found dead in Vesterbro. The two incidents weren’t immediately seen as being connected. Claire Winther received a call on her secret cell phone with the prepaid card. The conversation was short, something about her making sure that the bill would be paid.
Then she tossed the cell phone down one sewer drain and the card down another.
Toward evening the police showed up at the coast road villa. There was reason to believe that Claire’s husband was dead, and would she like to sit down.
Claire broke down when she identified the body, and she was offered emergency counseling, to which she said yes, please.
The tabloids all carried essentially the same story the next day: One of Denmark’s unknown billionaires, the Danish-American John Winther, had died in a sex game gone awry at a brothel in Vesterbro. In connection with his death, the police are looking for a small Spanish-speaking woman answering to the name of Michelle. She is possibly from South America. According to the brothel’s other prostitutes, the woman had recently been hired for a trial period and was servicing John Winther in the brothel’s S&M room, where the accident occurred. John Winther, 46, earned his fortune as an international developer. Recently he had bought up and developed sites in Russia and Brazil, where his company was presently involved in new subdivisions. The company owned many properties, both in and outside of Denmark.
The doctor had recommended to Claire that she check into a hotel to avoid the press storm, so she took a suite at D’Angleterre. The chairman of the board for John Winther Development, a prominent business lawyer, briefed her in the suite.
The company was in good shape, it could carry on as if nothing had happened, with one difference—she was now the majority stockholder.
“I’m going to spend