Page 58 of The Collector
“More or less.”
“Did you?”
“Eventually. But we had a terrible quarrel first. It ended when her phone rang and she told me I had to leave at once. It was the last time I ever saw her.”
Rikke had grown so isolated that for a long time no one realized she was missing. Finally, an old colleague from Noma contacted the police after receiving no response to dozens of calls and texts, and the police got in touch with Katje. No, she told them, she had not heard from her sister in several weeks. Was there anything unusual going on in her life? She was being kept by a wealthy and powerful man. Did Katje know this man’s name? Her sister refused to divulge it. It was part of their arrangement.
When another week went by with no sign of her, the police declared Rikke missing and opened an investigation. There were stories on television and in the papers, and flyers posted all over the country. Katje couldn’t go anywhere without being mistaken for her missing twin sister. She added streaks of crimson and purple to her coal-black Inuit hair and wore heavy makeup to hide her Inuit eyes.
“For the first time in my life,” she said, “no one called me racist names.”
Abandoned by her mother, orphaned by her father, lost without her twin sister, she decided to start a new life in a place where no one had ever heard of her. She chose Vissenbjerg because she saw a help-wanted advert for a counter job at Jørgens. She had three other part-time jobs as well and did volunteer work for a group called Enough, a feminist organization dedicated to the prevention of violence against women and children. She shared an old farmhouse with five other women. They were lost girls. Throwaway girls. Girls who had been disowned by their families. Girls who had been beaten by husbands and lovers. Girls who had been raped. Girls with scars. Girls with tracks on their arms. They never said an unkind word to one another. Never raised their voices. Never quarreled. They were a family. They had nowhere else to go.
And yet Katje never forgot Rikke—and never forgave herself for not dragging her out of that apartment in Nørrebro. She rang the police every Friday at 5:00 p.m. without fail and requested an update on the status of the investigation. Most of the calls lasted no more than a minute or two. Rikke, it seemed, had vanished without a trace.
“What about the man she was seeing?”
“The police told me they were never able to determine who he was.”
“How hard could it have been?”
“Trust me, I asked the same question.”
On the tenth anniversary of Rikke’s disappearance, the Danish police appealed to the public one final time for help in finding her. And when no new leads were forthcoming, they gave Katje the last of the evidence they had removed from the apartment. Interestingly enough, there was no jewelry or money. In fact, the only item of any value was an old book.
“Which was odd,” said Katje, “because my sister was never much of a reader.”
“Do you still have it, by any chance?”
“The book?” She nodded. “I thought about selling it and donating the money to Enough, but I kept it instead. It’s really quite beautiful.”
“What is it?”
“Romeo and Juliet.” Katje Strøm shook her head slowly. “How pathetic is that?”
It was not truly a farmhouse but a cottage hidden away in a dense stand of trees on the road between Vissenbjerg and Ladegårde. Ingrid waited at the door while Katje went in search of the book. Two other women waited with her. Lost girls, thought Gabriel. Throwaway girls. Girls who had been raped and abused. Girls with scars.
Finally, Katje reappeared, clutching a leather-bound volume. She gave the book to Ingrid, and Ingrid handed Katje something in return—something she accepted reluctantly. Then the two women embraced, and Ingrid returned to the Audi. She waited until the cottage was behind them before switching on the overhead light and opening the cover ofRomeo and Julietby William Shakespeare.
“Hodder and Stoughton. Published in 1912.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a sales receipt.”
“No. But there’s a lovely bookmark from the shop where it was purchased.” Ingrid held it up and smiled. “Nielsen Antiquarian, Strøget, Copenhagen.” She slid the bookmark between the pages of the century-old volume and switched off the light.
“How much did you give her?” asked Gabriel.
“Everything I had.”
“That was very generous of you.”
“I only wish I could have given her more.”
“So do I,” said Gabriel. “Starting with the name of the man who made her sister disappear without a trace.”
“When are you planning to tell her?”
“Actually, I had someone else in mind for the job.”
