Copenhagen Noir - Bo Tao Michaelis [94]
“No,” he snapped. “Svanhild.”
He rushed toward Central Station, and I did what I could to keep pace.
No more was said. At the street’s end we walked directly in through the nearest entrance and bolted up the steps to the main hall, where Christian Mogensen made a beeline for the stairs to track seven. I followed.
The tracks at Copenhagen’s Central Station lie in an excavated area underneath. On track seven, it was announced that an intercity train to Ǻrhus-Struer was arriving in five minutes. Mogensen ran down the steps as if the train was pulling out right in front of him. Without any hesitation I followed at his heels.
The platform was packed, but Mogensen shoved his way through until it thinned out in the crowd of travelers standing with suitcases and other luggage, ready to board as soon as the train pulled in.
They stood waiting for us at the far end of the platform, the blond woman and the broad-shouldered man I had met in the hallway an hour earlier. Mogensen stopped a few meters from them and stood with arms hanging, gasping for air. I stayed behind but off to one side of him for a clear view.
A few tracks away, an S train was headed out to the suburbs, maybe up to what Copenhageners called the “whiskey belt.” No one here on the platform at track seven was indulging in whiskey. But the looks they exchanged were as cold as ice cubes.
The woman I gathered to be Svanhild twisted her lips into the sourest smile I’d seen since Maggie Thatcher. “What’s wrong, darling?” she said to Mogensen.
“You’re both crazy! Was he the one who did it?”
The broad-shouldered man took a few steps to the side and raised his arm like a gunman before the last shootout. He nodded in my direction. “Who’s this clown?”
Mogensen turned halfway around, as if he’d forgotten that I had followed him. Then he pulled out his cell phone and held it in front of them. “I’m calling the police! I am—right now!”
“Remember to give them your confession,” Svanhild said, with an evil smile. “They’ll find your DNA when they test the sperm in her vagina. You gave me a nice-sized quantity of it this morning, have you forgotten? You didn’t say no, even when the gorgeous love of your life was waiting on Lille Istedgade—”
“You don’t mean—”
“A trip to the bathroom and a quick drain into a little bottle. That’s all it took. But we also grabbed a few hairs from your brush just to be safe and laid them on her pillow.”
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. “What are we talking about here? You’re not saying that—”
Mogensen turned to me again, his face as white as a sheet. “They killed her. That woman there—that evil woman, my wife—she couldn’t let me live with another woman. The one I’ve wanted so much all these years.” He turned back to Svanhild. “Why didn’t you take me instead?”
I was inclined to believe him. Her smile was more evil than that of the queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
“It wouldn’t have hurt enough, darling. Not long enough.”
“And he helped you! My partner, your lover, Frederik Vesterlund.”
“It was a sheer pleasure. For him too. He raped her while I held her down. But don’t worry. He didn’t come. Only you did.”
I could hardly believe my ears. Christian and Frederik stood staring at each other, two kings on the same platform. Like some fake arbitrator I walked between them. “But you’re forgetting one thing,” I said.
“What the hell is this Norwegian doing here?” Vesterlund bellowed.
“He’s the crown witness for the prosecution,” I said. “I can testify that I saw you two leave the building before Mogensen arrived. And when he came, he wasn’t in there long enough to have done any of these things at the scene of the crime that you’re babbling about.”
The train for Ǻrhus and Struer whistled in the tunnel behind us.
It all happened within a few seconds.
Svanhild pointed at me, and