Copenhagen Noir

“And you won’t go down and try to find her yourself?”

“No. It’s impossible. She blames us for everything that’s gone wrong.”

“Everything that’s gone wrong? You’ve just described a more or less normal life.”

“Yes, well, except that we forced her to come home back then. She has never been able to forgive us for that.”

“The young man she was staying with down there… did she ever hear from him again?”

He scrunched his lips together. “We don’t know. But… we found this, among her papers, after she moved back in with us following her divorce. A small apartment in the basement. We can come and go…”

I realized he was trying to make excuses as best he could, and I held out my hand. He gave me a tourist postcard, conventional, with a photo of Tivoli on the front. I turned it over. There wasn’t much written: I’ll meet you here, as planned. If problems, call this number. Your Christian. Below it he had written a telephone number that began with 45, the country code for Denmark.

I looked at the more recent photo again. “Christian-and a phone number. Have you tried calling him?”

“Yes, but he said I must have the wrong number.”

“I see.”

“And we don’t have the strength for it. I want you to go to Copenhagen and see this man, Veum. We want to know what has happened to our daughter. Why she doesn’t answer us…”

I took the job, got on the Internet, and reserved a plane ticket for the next day. Meanwhile, I searched for the name and number and found what I was after: Christian Mogensen, with an address on Wesselsgade, which according to my well-worn map of Copenhagen lay right next to Sortedams Sø, one of the city’s lakes.

I thought about calling him before I left Bergen but decided that it would probably be more effective to wait until I was a short taxi ride from where he lived.

It worked. The man who answered the phone sounded flustered when I introduced myself as a private investigator from Bergen, but he admitted that he was indeed Christian Mogensen and that he had sent a card to an old girlfriend in Bergen. I said that if he didn’t provide information that would lead me to Heidi Davik, I would be at his door like some crazy Viking faster than he could say “three mackerels.”

He hesitated a few seconds, but when I added “or like a bulldog gone berserk,” he gave me an address on Lille Istedgade and said that’s where I would find her, if she was at home.

“Lille Istedgade?” I said, and he took my tone of voice in such a way that he quickly added, “Yes, but Istedgade isn’t like it used to be.”

“No?”

“Not at all.”

In many ways he was right. True, the street still had a porno shop or two, and a few of the girls strolling the sidewalk in what seemed to be a casual manner wore conspiculously short skirts for November. The long look I got from one of them told me that I could warm myself up with her if I was cold.

Nonetheless, there was a shined-up look to the street that hadn’t been there in 1985, and when I got to the address Christian Mogensen had given me, a side street to Sønder Boulevard, the building proved to be newly renovated, the stairway nice and clean, and the list of tenants in the vestibule indicated that it was an apartment building. The left-hand apartment on the fourth floor-the one Mogensen had told me to go to-was apparently unoccupied. At least there was no name on the list.

On the way up I met a couple descending the stairs. The woman was blond, with hair pulled back severely and gathered in a knot. She wore an elegant dark-blue coat and carried a small black envelope purse in her gloved hand. She stared straight ahead, not looking in my direction. Her companion did, however: a broad-shouldered man with short dark hair, in a black winter coat and dark pants. The look he sent me was angry and hostile, as if he were saying: Try taking her away from me, if you dare…

For a moment or two I considered whether the building might be something other than what it seemed, perhaps a refuge for sadomasochists or some other crazy group. Then they passed by me, leaving behind only the reek of her strong perfume. I assumed it was hers, but you can never be sure. Not nowadays.

No one opened when I rang at the fourth-floor door that had no tenant name. I tried several times, and the doorbell could be heard all the way out in the hall, but there was no reaction from inside. I studied the door. It was made of solid, heavy wood, and the lock seemed secure, not one you could work open with a hairpin and a credit card.

I grabbed my phone, called Mogensen again, and gave him my sob story.

“Well, she’s just out somewhere,” he said.

“Then I’ll pay you a visit instead.”

“No, no. Wait right there, Veum, I’ll come to you.”

“And how long will that take?”

“Less than a half hour. Get a cup of coffee in the meantime.”