Out of the Dark (eBook)

Heidi Amsinck (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
362 Seiten
Muswell Press (Verlag)
978-1-0686844-2-5 (ISBN)

Infos

'Dark deeds and deep secrets abound in Heidi Amsinck's Copenhagen. A white knuckle ride into hell.' IAN RANKIN. 'Amsinck's Copenhagen-set crime series is reliably excellent.' MAIL ON SUNDAY. 'Relentless tension pulses through every page of this meticulously plotted thriller.' THOMAS ENGER. 'Nordic noir at its finest...outstanding...This is superior crime fiction.' JOAN SMITH, SUNDAY TIMES, PICK OF THE MONTH. 'The author's finest work.' SUN, PICK OF THE WEEK. A missing child ... a tainted witness ... Jensen's darkest case yet. Matilde Clausen, 9, vanishes from a crowded playground in the middle of Copenhagen, triggering a frantic search across the city. When a possible link emerges to the disappearance of Lea Høgh, 10, six years ago, DI Henrik Jungersen is thrown back into the nightmare that almost finished his career. Desperate for redemption, but barred from reopening the old case, Henrik turns to his estranged lover, Dagbladet chief crime reporter Jensen, for help.As the investigation reaches deep into Denmark's underworld, how will Henrik, Jensen, and her troubled teenage apprentice Gustav escape the darkness that threatens to engulf them, in time to solve the mystery? What really happened to Lea? And where on earth is Matilde?

Heidi Amsinck is a writer and journalist born in Copenhagen, now living in London. She has written many stories for BBC R4 and is the author of three previous titles in the Jensen series: My Name is Jensen, The Girl in the Photo and Back from the Dead.

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'Dark deeds and deep secrets abound in Heidi Amsinck's Copenhagen. A white knuckle ride into hell.' IAN RANKIN. 'Amsinck's Copenhagen-set crime series is reliably excellent.' MAIL ON SUNDAY. 'Relentless tension pulses through every page of this meticulously plotted thriller.' THOMAS ENGER. 'Nordic noir at its finest outstanding This is superior crime fiction.' JOAN SMITH, SUNDAY TIMES, PICK OF THE MONTH. 'The author's finest work.' SUN, PICK OF THE WEEK. A missing child ... a tainted witness ... Jensen's darkest case yet. Matilde Clausen, 9, vanishes from a crowded playground in the middle of Copenhagen, triggering a frantic search across the city. When a possible link emerges to the disappearance of Lea H gh, 10, six years ago, DI Henrik Jungersen is thrown back into the nightmare that almost finished his career. Desperate for redemption, but barred from reopening the old case, Henrik turns to his estranged lover, Dagbladet chief crime reporter Jensen, for help.As the investigation reaches deep into Denmark's underworld, how will Henrik, Jensen, and her troubled teenage apprentice Gustav escape the darkness that threatens to engulf them, in time to solve the mystery? What really happened to Lea? And where on earth is Matilde?

Textauszug

1

Detective Inspector Henrik Jungersen counted to three, flung open his car door and sprinted for the wrought-iron gates at the entrance to Ørstedsparken.

At least the rain kept the ghouls away, he thought as he nodded at the unlucky cop on guard duty and slipped inside the park.

The TV news crews were staying in their vans, watching from behind steamed-up windows.

Good.

He had no answers anyway.

One question had been gnawing at his brain all morning: how was it possible to abduct a child in the middle of Copenhagen, barely a couple of hundred yards from a busy metro station, shops and fast-food restaurants, without anyone noticing?

Nine-year-old Matilde Clausen had been missing for seventeen hours.

The playground, dug into the slope between the street and the large, vaguely boomerang-shaped lake in the middle of the park, was now a crime scene. As Henrik descended into the sandy hollow surrounded by trees and shrubbery, Detective Sergeant Mark Søndergreen came rushing towards him with an umbrella.

His face mirrored Henrik’s strong sense that something was horribly wrong.

Every parent’s worst nightmare.

‘They haven’t found anything, Boss,’ said Mark, gesturing at the technicians working in among the trees.

Henrik wasn’t surprised. Trampled on by dozens of kids and parents and soaked in overnight rain, the ground was unlikely to yield anything useful. But they had to try. ‘At this stage, nothing is irrelevant,’ he had told his team of investigators at the morning briefing.

The mobile phone Matilde had been given for her ninth birthday despite her mother’s protests was switched off, last detected inside the park a few minutes after she went missing. If they found it, they might be able to determine if she had been in touch with anyone of potential interest.

‘Give me a moment,’ said Henrik as he sheltered under Mark’s umbrella with the rain hammering on the canopy.

His jeans and boots were soaked, and water was trickling inside the collar of his shirt and down his back. He welcomed the icy sensation; he needed to stay awake, alert.

The past few months were a blur, a blank nothingness of training, shifts and paperwork.

Little daylight penetrated the thick cloud. The opposite end of Ørstedsparken, a sunken oasis of tranquillity close to Nørreport Station, was lost in the misty gloom.

You could almost feel it, the northern hemisphere hurtling towards the point furthest from the sun. The Christmas lights that had sprung up all over the city made a flimsy defence against the enveloping darkness.

Henrik tried to imagine what the playground would have been like yesterday afternoon, with screaming children crawling on the timber frame and being pushed on the swings by adults chatting and warming their hands on takeaway coffees.

It had been brighter then, a brief respite from the perpetual winter rain, but bitterly cold. The park would have looked beautiful, the light from the setting sun glinting off the surface of the lake, the old roofs and spires of the city just visible beyond the tree-lined perimeter.

‘Talk to me,’ he said finally, turning to Mark who had been waiting patiently, knowing better than to interrupt his boss when he was getting his bearings.

Good old Mark. Younger and fitter than him, energetic, loyal and hardworking. Did as he was told, a forgotten virtue in society at large, Henrik had always felt.

Mark had been a godsend after the turbulent events of the summer, quietly holding him up whenever he felt his knees buckling under him.

Above all, Mark knew when to keep his mouth shut and when to speak.

‘Stine Clausen . . . she’s the mother . . . was sitting over there, with Matilde’s half-brother asleep in the pram,’ said Mark.

He pointed to a wooden picnic table decorated with graffiti and Henrik was reminded that Ørstedsparken was open twenty-four hours. It was also widely known in Copenhagen as a gay cruising spot. Had been for more than 150 years. In his time, Henrik had dealt with rapes here, and a few stabbings, but never a missing child. Usually, such cases were solved before they reached his desk.

‘And where was Matilde?’ he said.

‘In there apparently.’ Mark gestured at the area of trees and bushes close to the picnic table, a mixture of evergreens and naked branches with a few yellow leaves clinging on for dear life.

Henrik had read in the notes that Matilde was a shy child, slight for her age. He frowned. ‘What was she doing in there?’

Mark shrugged.

‘And Stine?’ said Henrik.

‘On her phone, apparently. She would check now and again for Matilde, looking for her red coat, but then the baby began to cry, and she got busy settling him. When she looked up again, she couldn’t see her daughter.’

For how long had she been preoccupied? Henrik wondered. Phones made people deaf and blind; they got sucked in, forgot their surroundings.

(‘You should know,’ said his wife in his head.)

He kept meaning to put his phone away, to stop scrolling, but it had been like a compulsion in him lately, a shield against his thoughts and, God forbid, having to talk.

There had been other people in the park yesterday, lots of potential witnesses, and no one had reported seeing a little girl dragged off against her will. Someone Matilde knew then?

The distance from the playground to the nearest road made it hard to see how it could have been an opportunist move. It must have been planned meticulously, rehearsed even.

He rubbed his hand over the rough skin of his scalp and face. ‘And then what?’

‘Stine wasn’t too worried at first,’ said Mark. ‘Only when Matilde didn’t respond to her calls did she begin to panic. Other parents joined the search. They ran all over the park, and after about fifteen minutes, Stine called the police. It was almost completely dark by then.’

Henrik didn’t have to imagine that part. He could feel the primal fear of it, hear the increasingly desperate cries for Matilde echoing between the trees, the scene transformed from serenity to terror in a heartbeat.

‘The first uniforms were here in eight minutes and more arrived after that,’ Mark said. ‘They sealed off the playground and closed the park. The rest you know.’

Yeah, thought Henrik. The rest is a big fat zero.

The overnight response by operational command at Bellahøj police station had been textbook; he couldn’t fault it. The trouble was that none of it had worked.

Henrik looked at the lake, wondering if they would have to get the divers out.

Mark read his mind. ‘Matilde had been told not to go near the water under any circumstances.’

Since when did kids do as they’re told? Henrik thought.

But he didn’t truly believe the girl had drowned in the lake. It was more likely that she had left by the nearest exit to the playground, on the corner of Ahlefeldtsgade and Nørre Farimagsgade.

Alone or with someone.

Voluntarily or by force.

Most of the people who had been in the park when Matilde disappeared would have left by the time the police arrived. They needed those potential witnesses to come forward.

He looked at his phone, seeing missed calls from several crime reporters.

Jensen was a crime reporter, and knew his number, but she hadn’t called.

For months now, they had managed to avoid each other.

In the summer, when Jensen’s attempt to build a life with a new boyfriend had ended in disaster, he had been glad, hoping things could now go back to normal between them.

Until she had told him that she was pregnant and keeping the baby.

Jensen as a mother? It was unthinkable.

And it had changed everything.

Dreaming that he and Jensen might one day be together had made his marriage tolerable, like the possibility of escape, however remote, keeping a prisoner from abandoning all hope.

Now, the dream was dead. There would always be a child between him and Jensen.

Another man’s child.

The child of a psychopath.

He hadn’t known what else to do but throw himself into work – the more work the better.

He sighed, considering whether to return the reporters’ calls. The media would spread the word faster, encouraging witnesses to come forward, and he needed that, but was loath to get drawn into speculation about what might or might not have happened.

Seeing everyone in one go would save time.

And Jensen might come.

Her baby was due soon, but if he knew her at all, she would be working until she went into labour, possibly beyond it. The thought made him smile, despite himself.

‘Get the press department to call a doorstep,’ he said to Mark. ‘As soon as possible.’

Mark shuffled his feet, too polite to remind Henrik that his boss, Superintendent Jens Wiese, was wary of him addressing the press.

Wiese was wary of him full stop.

If it were up to Wiese, he would only see daylight, muzzled and on a tight leash, when strictly necessary.

‘You weren’t my first choice,’ Wiese had said that morning when he had assigned Henrik as lead investigator on the Matilde case.

Wiese needed good statistics but held his nose when it came to the grime and chaos of real-life police...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.4.2025
• Reihe/Serie: A Jensen Thriller
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Historische Kriminalromane
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Krimi / Thriller / Horror ► Krimi / Thriller
• Schlagworte: addiction • Atmospheric • award winning • Child abduction • child trafficking • chilling • clever plot • Coffee • Copenhagen • Crime Fiction • Crime Reporter • DanishNoir • Dark Pines • Denmark • feisty women. • female detective • Jensen Series BBC R4 • Journalist • Love • Love Story • missing children • Mystery • Obituaries • Page Turner • Pedophile Underworld • Police Investigation • police procedural • Strong Women • Teenagers • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo • The Reckoning • Thriller
• ISBN-10: 1-0686844-2-9 / 1068684429
• ISBN-13: 978-1-0686844-2-5 / 9781068684425