Three Dog Night by Elsebeth Egholm Read Free Book Online Page B

after they had haggled briefly over the price. Young. Not pretty, but not ugly, either. To be honest, he didn’t want to remember her face. Or her body, either. Only the function it had in relation to his.
    Afterwards he had driven home. He fell asleep just as the bells on the Copenhagen Town Hall clock chimed twelve times and Danmarks Radio Choir sang ‘
Vær Velkommen
’.
    â€˜What do you remember about Nina Bjerre, Mum?’
    Sitting at the kitchen table, his mother lit a cigarette.
    â€˜She had a brace on her teeth for a while.’
    â€˜That must be a long time ago.’
    His mother sucked air in with the cigarette. Then she got up. He heard her rummaging around in the living room and followed her.
    â€˜Here. I don’t know if this helps. This is Sanne’s twelfth birthday.’
    There were five photos. The girls – seven of them – were in the garden sitting on the patio eating birthday cake. Most of them were slim, still without women’s curves. It was summer. Shorts and skimpy dresses.
    His mother pointed.
    â€˜That’s her. That’s Nina.’
    It was a full-length shot. She was standing next to Sanne and a couple of the others on the slope in his aunt’s garden. They were all posing, pretending to be models.
    â€˜She was a little gangly, don’t you think?’ his mother said, pointing at the photo again. ‘Nice, slim body, but a bit knock-kneed. Not something you really notice, and not at all if she wears trousers.’
    She looked at him.
    â€˜They can fix crooked teeth nowadays, but I’ve yet to hear of anyone fixing knock knees.’

10
    I N THE MORNING Peter called in on Stinger’s sister, Elisabeth, on his way home to Djursland, but she hadn’t seen a sign of him and had no idea where he was.
    â€˜The earth must have swallowed him up,’ she said. ‘You said he met a woman?’
    Lulu had described how a masculine-looking woman dressed in black, with a square face, had gone up to Stinger and persuaded him to skip the roast chicken in favour of something that was evidently more interesting. Elisabeth shook her head. The description didn’t match anyone she knew in Stinger’s circle, but it sounded just like him to be tempted by the offer of a night out.
    â€˜I bet he went pub-crawling with her until closing time and found someone to go home with,’ said Elisabeth, who had a visitor and didn’t have time to talk.
    They stood talking in the doorway and Peter caught a glimpse of her guest sitting in the living room pressing an ice pack against one cheek. She was a tall, skinny girl with a ponytail. She had clearly been beaten up because she had black eyes and bruised cheeks.
    â€˜She’s run away from her boyfriend. I have to help her,’ Elisabeth whispered. ‘If he finds out where she is, he’ll kill her.’
    Peter wanted to ask what the boyfriend would do if he found his girlfriend at Elisabeth’s. Would he kill her, too? But he said nothing. He had the feeling he and Stinger’s sister had more in common than might be thought at first glance. He knew only too well what it was like to invite in every waif and stray and not know when to say stop. He felt like saying to her: think about when and how to say no. But it was none of his business, so he opened the back of the car for Kaj and drove to Djursland, thinking he would go to the police station and tell them he knew Ramses. But he had promised Manfred to be at work first thing and it was already nine-thirty, so instead he decided he would use his lunch break to do the honourable thing.
    The carpenter’s workshop was in an old barn opposite the main house, which Manfred was doing up as and when he could find the time; a Sisyphean task, as he called it. When Peter arrived he was standing by the trestles and sanding turquoise paint off a door for his and Jutta’s bathroom.
    â€˜Great day yesterday.’
    Peter