Last Train to Helsingør Read online

  His eyes searched the shelves behind the desk. ‘You keep medicine here, don’t you? I can pay,’ he said, patting his pocket.

  ‘Now look here—’ Cecilie cut herself off, distracted.

  A tall, elegant woman had appeared outside. She was standing motionless in the moonlight, staring intently through the window. The light reflected metallically off her black fur coat and fur hat, and her face was as white as porcelain, the lower half lost in shadows.

  ‘Your wife … is she with you?’ Cecilie began, gesturing over Jørgensen’s shoulder at the window, but he had buried his face in his hands.

  ’Oh, my wife. My poor wife,’ he said, scratching furiously at the red patch above his ear. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Very well,’ Cecilie said, checking her watch. ‘I guess I can spare a few minutes, but as a state employee I can’t accept any form of payment.’

  Jørgensen thought about this briefly, then nodded in agreement. He reached into the pocket of his coat. ‘Do you mind?’ he said, sucking hard on an electronic cigarette. ‘I find it calming.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  She dismissed an urge to fetch her own out of the desk drawer, afraid of the familiarity it might suggest. Soon, clouds of vapour swirled above Jørgensen’s head. He loosened his collar and patted his brow with a dirty handkerchief.

  Carefully considering how to begin, Cecilie glanced over the man’s shoulder at the woman outside. She had not moved an inch. Her eyes were piercing, dark hollows, making Cecilie shudder.

  Jørgensen did not turn to look. His hand was shaking badly. Cecilie shifted in her seat, reached for her pad and pen.

  ‘You’re married, you said.’

  He nodded miserably.

  ‘And what do you do?’ she probed.

  ‘My father was a builder. We didn’t have much; I left school early. But a few years back, I got a job in a furrier’s just around the corner from the Royal Theatre.’

  Cecilie knew the place, recalled a large black sign with elegant gold lettering above the door, a line of trees along the pavement.

  ‘I am familiar with it,’ she said.

  ‘Well, that’s where I met Helene. She was the owner’s daughter and a few years older than me, used to come and help out in the shop now and again. We married, and when her old man passed away we took over the shop.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘In the past few weeks I have not been able to open for business, though Christmas is our busiest season. God help me, I can’t sleep at night, and during the day I cannot keep my eyes open. It’s the only time when I can get a little rest from it.’

  ‘From what, Mr Jørgensen? What’s keeping you awake at night?’

  ‘The voices – I’m hearing voices. That means I’m going mad, doesn’t it? Go on, say it!’

  ‘Don’t upset yourself. Just answer my questions, if you would. Tell me about the voices you’ve been hearing,’ Cecilie said.

  ‘It’s her, Helene,’ he shouted. ‘Clear as day. Sometimes whispering, sometimes shouting. There is never a moment’s pause.’

  Cecilie lifted her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

  ‘Your wife talks to you all night?’ she said wearily. ‘May I suggest you sleep in another room? Or ask her to be quiet?’

  Jørgensen stood up, placed his large hands on the desk. ‘You don’t understand!’ he shouted. ‘Helene … she’s dead.’

  ‘She is?’ Cecilie was confused. She glanced at the woman in the fur coat, who was still standing stock-still outside the window. ‘When I asked earlier if you were married, you confirmed it. You left me to think—’

  ‘But I am married,’ he insisted. ‘Kristina, God bless her sweet heart, is my second wife. We married in October.’

  ‘I see.’ She picked up the pad and pencil again, made a few notes. ‘Please do sit down, Mr Jørgensen. Try to stay calm. Your first wife, was she ill?’

  ‘No,’ he said, as though he wished it had been so. He buried his face in his hands again, groaning loudly.

  ‘She drowned, out there on the sound. We own a yacht; it used to be her father’s. One Sunday on our way back to the marina my wife fell overboard in rough weather. I tried to rescue her, but she was lost.’

  His level tone of voice suggested he had recounted the events many times before.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Cecilie said.

  Jørgensen shrugged unhappily.

  ‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘I feel as if she is there in the room, or behind me in the street, taunting me.’

  ‘And what does she say?’

  ‘She says …’ Jørgensen swallowed and stopped. Cecilie urged him with her eyes to go on.

  ‘She says I killed her and stole her father’s money.’ He pressed his hands to the side of his head and moaned. ‘She haunts me, even from the grave. Look at me – I am a wreck.’

  ‘And did you?’ Cecilie said, a bit more sharply than she intended.

  Jørgensen looked dazed. ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Do those things she said?’

  ‘Absolutely not. It was an accident. The money became mine on her death, fair and square. My wife was an only child, see?’

  Jørgensen held Cecilie’s gaze with his bloodshot eyes till she had to look away. Now she noticed his hands. His suit was expensive, his coat had a mink collar, but his hands were large and rough, like those of a labourer. They trembled slightly.

  ‘Was your first marriage a happy one?’ she asked, a twitch of anxiety in her abdomen.

  Jørgensen appeared put out. ‘We had our ups and downs, same as everybody else.’ He paused, glared at her.

  ‘Are you married, Doctor Lindegaard? Because then you will know exactly what I mean.’

  ‘I used to be,’ Cecilie said, nodding. Ups and downs was hardly an adequate term for Morten’s violent temper, she thought.

  Jørgensen leant back smugly, as though she had just proved his point. ‘Well then.’

  She raised her voice, her cheeks tingling with indignation: ‘People might say you remarried rather quickly after your first wife’s death. Tell me, were you and this Kristina seeing each other before the boating tragedy?’

  Jørgensen’s smile vanished. ‘What are you getting at?’

  ‘Does that mean yes?’

  He stared at her defiantly. ‘She worked in the shop. I don’t believe it’s illegal to marry a member of one’s staff.’

  He jumped out of his seat. ‘Actually,’ he said. ‘I think I have told you more than enough. Now will you give me something?’

  When she did not react, he folded his hands in mock prayer. ‘Please, doctor. If it doesn’t stop, I will lose the shop. Kristina will leave me, I will have nothing left.’

  Cecilie looked out at the woman who kept staring in through the window. Her eyes were fixed on Jørgensen’s back. Behind her were the silvery waters of the sound and, further along the coast, the slumbering heart of the city. How long since Cecilie had been to Copenhagen, or even outside the asylum? Last she heard, Morten was still working at the same hospital, but he wouldn’t come after her now, not after so many years. Would he?

  ‘There are certain drugs,’ she said, caressing the silky ridges on her hands under the table. ‘Relaxants, sleeping pills, that sort of thing. But they will not cure the underlying cause of your condition. Someone would need to diagnose you properly.’

  She wasn’t prepared for Jørgensen’s reaction. With an astonishing agility for someone so heavy, he leant across the desk and grabbed her by the collar of her shirt before she could press the panic button. Limply, she reached out for the desk phone, but it was too far away.

  ‘You think you’re so clever,’ he shouted. ‘Sitting here in your cosy office and passing judgement. You don’t know what it’s like to lie awake all night, to constantly look over your shoulder to see who is there, to never be at peace.’

  ‘Oh, but I do know. I know exactly,’ Cecilie said, managing to speak in a level tone of voice and looking Jørgensen in the
eye, though her body had become liquid with fear.

  ‘Is this the way you treated your first wife, Mr Jørgensen?’ she said.

  They stood like that for a while, struggling, their grotesque amalgamated form reflected in the windowpane. Her hands had reared up, a long-remembered gesture of protection. Morten had liked to come at her with his belt, the buckle splitting her skin open across the backs of her hands.

  The woman outside had not moved. She was still staring at Jørgensen, transfixed, unblinking. In the frozen, still air, she appeared to be floating.

  Cecilie pointed over Jørgensen’s shoulder. ‘Your wife, why is she out there in the cold? And why does she keep standing there, staring at you like that?’

  Jørgensen let go of her shirt and turned wide-eyed towards the window. Then he began to splutter. He clutched at his chest with both hands, shoulders hunched, his face crimson.

  ‘Her … she is dead, dead,’ he rasped, pointing at the window, before collapsing on the rug.

  Cecilie knelt down and felt for his pulse. His heart had stopped. She spent some minutes in a vain attempt to resuscitate him, but Jørgensen was gone. When she looked up at the window again, the woman had vanished, as if she had never been there in the first place.

  Cecilie ran down the corridor, almost colliding with the security guard coming the other way on his regular rounds. ‘Did you see her?’ she shouted. ‘The woman outside my window?’

  ‘Who?’ The guard had dribbled gravy down the front of his white shirt. ‘I have not seen a soul all evening besides your visitor, and all the wards are quiet,’ he said. ‘What is it, Doctor Lindegaard? What’s happened? You look white as a sheet.’

  She didn’t stop to explain. ‘The man you let in,’ she shouted. ‘He is dead, in my office. Call an ambulance and the police. Tell them there is no rush.’

  Without looking back, she ran down the drive, away from the asylum, her footsteps curiously light and silent on the snowy ground. She trembled, her hands fluttering like white birds against her body.

  The woman was halfway down the road outside the gates by the time Cecilie caught up with her. She was almost as tall as the square dark hedges that lined the pavement, buffering the neighbourhood’s large villas from public view. Her breath hung in a white cloud about her fur hat.

  ‘Stop,’ Cecilie shouted after her. ‘Who are you?’

  The woman stood very still for a moment with her neck bent. Then she turned and removed her hat, a dowdy middle-aged woman with a defeated look in her eyes.

  ‘I think you must have worked that out by now,’ she said.

  In the silence, from one of the nearby houses, came the faint sound of singing, a Christmas hymn. Cecilie recognised the words: ‘Heart, lift thy wings of joy.’

  ‘Is he dead?’ Helene Jørgensen asked, finally.

  ‘Yes. Nothing I could do.’

  ‘Good,’ said Helene. She sighed. ‘Then I expect you will want to report me to the police.’

  ‘Should I?’ Cecilie asked.

  ‘He married me for my father’s money, and I took him because no one else wanted me. Then he pushed me into the sea,’ Helene said.

  ‘But you survived.’

  ‘A Swedish boat picked me up. I was barely alive.’ She smiled sadly. ‘I watched my own funeral from behind a tree. He kissed that girl by my graveside.’

  ‘Kristina.’

  She closed her eyes, whispered ‘Yes.’ She shook her head as if to rid herself of the memory. ‘Well, you saw tonight what kind of man he is.’

  ‘What did you do?’ Cecilie said. ‘I mean afterwards?’

  ‘I stayed in Sweden for a while. The police would have been very interested in hearing from me. My husband might have been in jail by now, but I wanted him to suffer. So I started letting myself in to our apartment and hiding in cupboards, behind the curtains or under the table.’

  ‘And you spoke to him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  They stood like that for a while. Cecilie was the first to break the silence. ‘Assuming I don’t tell the police about you, what will you do now? Where will you go?’

  The tall woman shrugged. ‘Helene Jørgensen is dead. That makes me a ghost, and ghosts are free to go wherever they want.’ She lowered her voice. ‘If you will let me?’

  Cecilie nodded slowly.

  They shook hands and a look passed between them. Then Helene Jørgensen turned and walked down the road, towards the water in which she was given up for dead, her footsteps hushed by the snow.

  When she had gone, Cecilie started walking back towards the asylum. Jørgensen’s death would have to be explained. There would be forms to fill in, statements to be made. They would have to tighten security and she would be reprimanded for not raising the alarm sooner.

  She sighed, then stopped walking, hesitated.

  After a few minutes, an ambulance, closely followed by a police car, came creeping quietly up the road, their blinking lights flickering across the iron railings.

  Cecilie made a swift decision and pressed herself against a laurel hedge, making herself one with the foliage. The drivers did not see her.

  If not for her white, steamy breath or the long black shadow she cast in the snow, she could have believed herself invisible then.

  She did not feel cold at all, but drunk on the sharp, new air, on the sight of the road down which the ghost of Helene Jørgensen had so effortlessly vanished.

  Before she knew it, Cecilie was running, lighter and faster with each step, away from the asylum, towards the train station and the city and the strange blue night.

  The Suitcase

  At Kastrup Airport, it was late but still light, as though a layer of blue gauze had been draped over Copenhagen. Had Hopkins not dawdled in that curious midsummer night, causing him to end up behind a flight from Alicante in the passport queue, it would not have happened.

  When he reached arrivals, the baggage carousel was empty. Before he had even opened his mouth, the blonde woman behind the desk passed him a card with pictures of suitcases. He pointed to one that looked like his. Black, medium-sized, retractable handle, wheels.

  The woman pushed a form across the desk for him to fill in. ‘We’ll contact you if it turns up.’

  ‘If?’ he said, and the woman shrugged.

  Hopkins made a quick inventory. The suitcase held his clothes, his order forms and the list of clients he was supposed to visit in the next five days. A spasm seized his throat at the thought of it. As he walked out through customs, empty-handed, he had to steady himself on a wall.

  At the hotel, he sat on his bed without removing his coat and looked out the window. He thought, I am in a city I don’t know, with nothing but the clothes I am wearing.

  The hotel was opposite Tivoli Gardens. The amusement park was shimmering with lights. He could hear the screams – the mechanical grind of the rides that rose high above the trees. People with their legs dangling free were being hoisted up the side of a tall, golden tower then sent tumbling to the ground. Hopkins had to look away.

  His mobile phone rang, number unknown. Perhaps it was the woman at the airport. Perhaps they had found his suitcase already.

  ‘Mr Hopkins?’ The voice was male, old and heavily accented.

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘You don’t know me, but I’m afraid I have your suitcase. I took it, at the airport.’

  ‘Thank God,’ Hopkins said. The man must have found his number on the name tag. ‘Are you still at the airport?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In that case, you can bring it to my hotel. I am in the centre, opposite Tivoli.’

  ‘I don’t walk so well. Could I possibly ask you to come here instead? It will be the quickest way.’

  Hopkins thought for a moment. Could it be a scam? He had never heard of such a thing.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

  ‘Very good. I’ll send a car for you. When you get here, go to the fourth floor.’

  There was a click. The man w
as gone before Hopkins could ask why the suitcase could not simply be sent along.

  The car turned out to be an old but well-kept black Mercedes. Hopkins hesitated on the kerb, unsure whether to wait for the uniformed driver to get out and open the door. After a few minutes in which nothing happened, he let himself in and sat on the back seat.

  As they set off, the doors locked with a snap. There was a pane of tinted glass between himself and the driver.

  What am I doing, getting into a car with a stranger in a city I have never been to before? Hopkins thought, his palms tingling.

  He tried to memorise the journey, but soon had to give up. They drove past endless blocks of lit-up apartment blocks down boulevards, along dark lakes bordered by trees. He was almost certain they passed the same square twice. Finally, the driver pulled up outside an imposing, neoclassical building. It was a good few minutes before Hopkins realised he was meant to get out.

  The door to the building was ajar. As Hopkins walked towards it, the Mercedes sped away and disappeared around the corner.

  There was a lift. It had a polished wooden door with a porthole window. It was slow and very small, and made a loud knocking sound as it passed each floor.

  The landing had elaborate balustrades and was lit by crystal lights set into grey and white panelling. There was only one door. Hopkins rang the bell and, after a while, heard a soft shuffle inside.

  The door was opened slowly, revealing a well-dressed elderly man with thick horn-rimmed glasses and a face riddled with liver spots. He was leaning on a walking stick. A faint smell of cigar smoke emanated from the apartment, and somewhere inside there was music playing, a soft piano.

  ‘Ah,’ the man said. ‘Mr Hopkins. I trust the drive was all right?’

  Hopkins immediately relaxed. His suitcase was standing right there in the hallway.

  ‘Yes, thank you. Though your driver doesn’t say very much.’

  The old man smiled. ‘Otto is … how do you say it … a man of few words. Please, do come in.’

  Hopkins glanced at the suitcase, but decided it would be impolite not to spare a couple of minutes.

  They walked through to a spacious, elegantly furnished living room in which three walls were taken up entirely by shelves crammed with books, pictures and artefacts. A half-smoked cigar was smouldering in an ashtray by a winged armchair.