The Forgotten Girls by Sara Blædel Read Free Book Online

sets, and Louise spotted a couple of benches in the tall grass. There hadn’t been people here for the past few days, she noted, because the grass had not been trampled down anywhere.
    They walked over to the house and looked through the windows. A typical school camp place, Eik noted. Bunk beds and the tables had been pushed together in the dining room. Along the walls, chairs were stacked high. There was no sign of anything resembling a homeless woman’s possessions in either the common room or any of the multiple bedrooms in the building’s two long wings.
    “What do we know about the forest worker?” Louise asked after she had turned the car around and Eik had gotten the police report out of the glove compartment.
    “We know his name is Thomsen,” he read, “and he lives in Skov Hastrup. Are you familiar with that place, too?”
    Louise nodded, once again concentrating on the potholes. She blinked and proceeded slowly to keep stone chips from hitting the car. The sun was bright through the leafy treetopsand blinded them like photography flashes cut off by the moving leaves.
    She was about to speed up as they emerged from the forest, but just then she spotted a large man standing with a rake in the yard outside the old gamekeeper’s house, waiting for them to pass by. Instead Louise eased off the gas and waved.
    The man waved back eagerly like an excited child.
    Louise took her time before speeding up and drove past the driveway with one hand still raised as a greeting.
    “Old boyfriend of yours?” Eik laughed and joined in waving to the man, whose grin grew even bigger.
    “You could say that.” Louise told Eik that the man in the lumberjack shirt had been in a work accident. “He was working at a construction site and had just removed his hard hat to put on a sweater when an iron pipe fell from the scaffold. He and his wife moved out here shortly after the accident, and she’s been taking care of him since. Jørgen is always there, waving whenever someone drives by.”
    Eik stopped laughing and looked in the side-view mirror at the man with the rake, who still had his arm raised.
    It was less than two miles to Skov Hastrup, a tiny village shaped like a crescent behind the main road to Hvalsø.
    “Tell me the forest worker’s name again,” she asked, signaling to turn.
    “Ole Thomsen,” he read off and coughed once more as if his lungs were trying to escape from the deep.
    Big Thomsen
, Louise thought, nodding to herself. She could certainly picture him. More brawn than brains. As she recalled, he had worked in the gravel pit, so it was no stretch of the imagination to think that he would have made the transfer to the woods.
    “He lives somewhere called Glentesø Road,” Eik went on once he had caught his breath.
    She pulled away from the main road and drove down a narrow road with wide shoulders.
    “It could be the next farm down there,” Eik suggested, pointing ahead at a turn in the road.
    Louise slowed before turning into the courtyard, where she parked behind a beat-up Toyota Land Cruiser.
    She had just turned off the engine when the kitchen door swung open, allowing her a clear view. Big Thomsen had barely changed. He was still tall and muscular, but his dark hair was shorter than the last time she had seen him, and he was balding above his temples. The new haircut was probably meant to disguise his receding hairline, Louise thought as she got out of the car.
    She let Eik take the lead and stayed in the background as he introduced himself and explained that he was aware Ole Thomsen had already made his statement to the Holbæk Police Department; they had just a few follow-up questions.
    “Do you mind if I use the Dictaphone?” Eik asked and pulled the small voice recorder from his pocket.
    Big Thomsen nodded expectantly. He leaned back a little, arms folded across his chest, so he was looking down at them slightly. At first glance there was nothing to suggest that he recognized Louise, she