The Killing Forest Read Online Free PDF Page A

does the boy in the photo resemble the butcher’s son?” Louise asked. She looked over at Eik, whose desk was pushed up against hers. Obviously he hadn’t been following the conversation; his eyes were glued to his computer screen. Louise realized she didn’t even know if any new cases had come in while she’d been gone, or if he was looking at some of the old cases they had been given. Somehow she had managed to push work completely out of her head.
    “It looks a lot like him,” Mik said. “This seems to be a clear missing person case to me, and we’ve had it for two weeks now without making any real progress. That’s why I’m sending it to you.”
    He was following procedure. When a missing person hasn’t been found within two weeks, local police stations shuttle the case on to the Search Department, which then picks up the investigation, tracking the movements of the person and collecting identification information.
    It was almost too strange that the butcher from Hvalsø ended up on her desk, Louise thought. True, her unit—she and Eik—primarily investigated and did fieldwork, while their colleagues in the department for the most part worked in the office, coordinating registers and searching international data banks for personal information pertaining to searches. But she had been back for all of ten minutes and there he was. The butcher. If Mik had called Friday, it would have been Eik or one of the others who would been sent to the small mid-Zealand town.
    “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of parents accepting the disappearance of their child,” she said. She glanced over again at Eik, who was still staring at the monitor. “In fact, they usually have a horrible time dealing with the situation, even when there’s a corpse involved.”
    “Exactly,” Mik said. “Something’s wrong here, and that’s why I think you should look at it, too.”

4
    C amilla Lind picked up the pace. What had looked like a small shower when she left home was now a downpour. Maybe she should turn around, she thought. But she loved the smell of the wet forest floor, the raindrops plunking her sweaty forehead.
    She had begun running after moving into her in-laws’ large manor house, Ingersminde, in Boserup, not far from Roskilde. She never went very far, but at least she ran, which gave her the opportunity to explore the large section of private forest on the property.
    The path narrowed and curved to the right, passing through a small thicket that quickly gave way to the more open space of forest. As she ran, she tried to come up with a good title for the interview she’d been working on all day. She was a freelance journalist, currently taking assignments for the paper in Roskilde, and once in a while they gave her some doozies. But it had been a pleasure to interview Svend-Ole at his little workshop out in Svogerslev. For the past thirty-five years he had emptied the slot machines in Tivoli, and he had a large collection of one-armed bandits in his garage that he and his wife enjoyed playing.
    Suddenly Camilla caught sight of something between the trees. She slowed down. Everything looked blurry through the rain, but she could make out a boy crouching under a big tree, eating something he picked up off the ground. Even at this distance, she could see he was soaked to the skin, his wet hair plastered to his head.
    She started walking over toward the clearing. As she drew closer, she smelled wood burning, a sour odor, and she noticed a large area where there had been bonfires, which made her wonder. She’d definitely never been here before.
    “Hi!” she called out. “Aren’t you cold?”
    The boy started when he heard her voice, then immediately jumped up and ran.
    Which surprised Camilla, who called out, “Hey, wait!”
    But the boy sprinted off. Strange, she thought. She decided to run after him.
    Just before reaching the tree, her legs slipped out from under her. She swore loudly as she fell, landing on her