The Forgotten Girls Read Online Free Page B

description and photo have been sent out with a notice to contact the Special Search Agency if you recognize the woman or have any idea who she might be.”
    He looked expectantly at Louise.
    “Great,” she complimented. “Have you seen the pictures they took where they found her?”
    He shook his head.
    Louise brought them up on her screen and sent them to him.
    His furrowed face turned serious as he leaned forward, intently studying the photographs. “My mom had flowered smocks like that. They closed with a bunch of hooks in front, too,” he said. “I think it was the sixties but you would think they hadn’t invented the zipper yet. I didn’t know they still existed.”
    Louise contemplated the picture and nodded. From the clothes it did look as if time must have stood still for her.
    “How ’bout we drive down and speak to the guy who found her ourselves?” he went on. “We can put a little pressure on him.”
    “I already made plans to do that first thing tomorrow,” Louise said. She briefly wondered whether her temporary partner intended to show up on his own the next day or if she was going to have to pick him up again.
    “You go ahead and go to Roskilde,” he said, shutting down his computer and putting on his leather jacket. “I can talk to him. I have nothing else to do now anyway.”
    Louise took her eyes off the screen and watched him as he dug the last cigarette out of the pack, which he crumpled up and tossed into the wastebasket.
    “It’s not exactly a high-priority case that calls for overtime,” she objected. She guessed that he was the type of person who would come in late and then turn around and add extra hours to his time sheet if he ended up staying past 4 p.m. That wasn’t going to fly with her. “You don’t even know where Avnsø Lake is!”
    “I’ve got GPS.”
    “Sure, you’ll find your way to the woods but then that’s as far as you’ll get. There’s no coverage once you drive in there.”
    She was usually the one to insist on getting things done, she reflected. And she wondered if this could be a sign of her getting old and complacent.
No way
, she decided, picking up her bag. She may have just turned forty, but she wasn’t ready to be “fat and finished,” as the old Danish saying went. “All right, fine; we’ll go now.”
    On their way out they stopped by Hanne’s office. Louise left it to Eik to pick up the key for one of the department’s two cars. When they got downstairs, though, she held out her hand.
    “I’m driving,” she informed him.

5
    T HEY DROVE TOGETHER in silence. Louise turned her head several times to see if Eik had fallen asleep but he sat attentively, his broad hands folded in his lap, and watched as she turned left and passed a closed-down lumber mill with broken windows. The abandoned wooden structures had an air of ghost-like emptiness.
    Right on the woods’ edge sat a thatched-roof farmhouse with three wings almost obscured by the dense treetops. It was enclosed by a white fence and large gate. Louise slowed a little as they passed. The old gamekeeper’s house had been her dream home for years.
    “There’s a camping cabin all the way up by the meadow where the slope descends to the lake,” she explained as they drove down Bukkeskov Road. “But if we drive up to the cabin, we’ll have to park quite a way from where she fell so I’m goingto continue to Avnsø Lake, and then we can walk along the path. It’s faster.”
    “Sounds like you’re pretty familiar with these parts,” he observed, looking at her with curiosity.
    “I’m from here,” she admitted, struggling to avoid the biggest potholes in the road. “Well, not from right here but from Lerbjerg over on the other side of the woods. I spent most of my childhood on these roads. When we got a bit older, we’d get together by the lake and make bonfires.”
    She refrained from letting him in on the fact that the gatherings had usually involved plenty of beer as well as