Chapter 3
It was early Monday morning, October 8. Søren Marhauge was driving to Copenhagen, his car right behind a red Honda. He was Denmark’s youngest police superintendent, based at Copenhagen’s Police Department A, Station 3 in Bellahøj. It was well known that Søren had risen quickly through the ranks because he could “knit backward” as he called it. He possessed an extraordinary eye for the true nature of things, and many of the most spectacular conclusions reached in Department A had been achieved by Søren. At the age of thirty he had been promoted to superintendent. That was seven years ago.
Søren was in a hurry, so he overtook the Honda. He was late because he had stopped in Vangede to have breakfast with Vibe. Vibe and Søren had dated for seventeen years, but three years ago they’d split up. They had lived together in Nørrebro in Copenhagen, but Søren now lived in a house in Humlebæk, north of the city. Vibe had since married and lived with her husband in a house by Nymosen in the suburb of Vangede.
When they were still a couple, Vibe and Søren had done everything together. Picked strawberries, taken the train together all through Europe, traveled to India, shared student housing, and opened a totally unnecessary joint bank account. They had even worn matching rings. In those seventeen years it had never once crossed Søren’s mind that Vibe might not be the right girl for him. Vibe was his girl. The end. They had met at a high school dance, their teenage romance continued into adulthood, and no one ever questioned it, least of all Søren.
Then one morning Vibe woke up wanting to have a baby. Having children wasn’t something they had ever really discussed, and when Vibe first brought it up Søren didn’t take much notice. But the genie was out of the bottle. Vibe’s biological clock had started ticking and soon the putative child became a sore point. Søren didn’t want children. He explained why: he had no parental urges at all. He thought that in itself was a good enough reason. Vibe began screaming at him. Vibe, who had been good-natured and sweet all through their time together, refused to accept his ridiculous position: there are two of us in this relationship, she argued. Søren tried to explain again. Needless to say, he only made matters worse. He went for a walk to think it through. He felt no desire to be a father, but why? For the first time since meeting Vibe, he wondered whether it was because he didn’t love her enough. That evening—without screaming—she made the very same point: if she wanted a child so badly and he wouldn’t give it to her, then it was because he didn’t love her. I do love you, Søren protested, desperately. But you don’t love me enough, Vibe had replied. She had her back to him and was taking off her earrings while Søren thought about what she had said. Slowly, she turned around. Your hesitation says it all, she declared, I think we should split up. Her eyes were challenging him.
Obviously they weren’t going to split up. Vibe was his best friend, his closest and most trusted ally. She knew Elvira and Knud, she knew why he had grown up with his grandparents; she was family and he loved her. Søren hugged her tightly that night and they agreed to give it some time or, more accurately, they agreed that if Søren didn’t change his mind very soon, he would have to go.
Søren was born in Viborg in Jutland. For the first five years of his life he lived with his parents. His maternal grandparents, Knud and Elvira, lived nearby in his mother’s childhood home which lay outside a small village, on a hill, with a garden that sloped steeply down behind the house. The lawn was impossible to mow, and the long tangled grass offered numerous places to hide. Søren had hardly any memories of his earliest childhood, but he remembered Knud and Elvira’s red house vividly, probably because it was there that Knud had told him his parents had been killed in a car crash. Knud and Elvira had been looking after him that weekend; Søren’s parents had borrowed their car and driven off on an adventure. He remembered being told at the far end of the garden one summer’s evening with Spif, the dog, standing next to him, barking. The next childhood memory he could clearly recall was their move to Copenhagen, to the house in Snerlevej. Knud and Elvira were teachers and both got jobs at the nearby public school, which Søren also attended. Søren lived in Snerlevej for the rest of his childhood. Far, far away from the red house.
Søren and Vibe had been together for almost six months when Vibe figured out that a generation was missing between Søren and the couple she—up until that moment—had assumed to be his parents. It hit to her one summer’s day when Søren was in the kitchen making iced tea. Elvira had already gone outside; they could hear her spreading a cloth over the garden table and insects buzzing in the uncut grass. While Søren mixed the tea in a pitcher, Vibe studied the wedding photograph of Søren’s parents that was standing on the sideboard in the dining room. Suddenly a dark cloud of wonder spread across her face, and she scrutinized the photograph as if seeing it properly for the very first time. She looked as if she wanted to say something, but then thought better of it.