by Sara Blaedel
Louise had always had a great deal of respect for her chief investigator, and when she heard about the yoga retreat, her already admirable opinion of Henny increased. She mostly thought of Heilmann as fairly reserved and a hard worker. Louise found that the image of Heilmann sitting in the lotus position meditating, with her middle finger and thumb together, gave her boss a whole new dimension.
‘Where did Bjergholdt write from?’ Louise asked.
‘From an internet café on H. C. Ørstedsvej,’ Heilmann responded.
Lars had got up and was standing in the middle of the office. ‘Shit!’ He angrily slammed his right fist into the palm of his left hand.
‘But if he wrote to her from that location every day for the last month, then there’s a reasonably good chance some of the other regulars or whatever you call them could recognise him or positively ID him,’ Louise suggested.
‘He actually wrote from multiple locations,’ Heilmann said. ‘We traced most of the emails Susanne received from Bjergholdt’s email account back to IP addresses that belong to that café, which has about twenty computers. But we also found an IP address that matches a computer at Frederiksberg Library and another one from the Central Library.’
‘He really went out of his way to make himself hard to track down,’ Louise exclaimed, as her I’m-sure-someone-will-recognise-him theory crashed and burned.
‘You can say that again,’ Heilmann nodded. ‘We’ve got to get a solid description, and then you have to go find out if anyone at any of those locations noticed him.’
Louise said that Susanne was having a session with Jakobsen, so they would have to wait a bit before they took her to look at pictures.
Heilmann, who was leaning against the door, stumbled forward when Senior Sergeant Willumsen suddenly pushed the door open.
‘We need ten people out in Nykøbing Sjaelland. You guys are coming. We’re leaving in half an hour.’
‘That’s going to be difficult,’ Heilmann said coolly.
‘We located the suspect in the murder of that immigrant woman that people thought would remain cold,’ he continued, ignoring her.
‘That’s nice,’ Heilmann said calmly. ‘We’re busy getting a description of the perp in a rape case, so you’ll have to take people from one of the other groups.’
There were five investigative groups in the homicide division, so in principle there were plenty of people to choose from, but it just wasn’t in Willumsen’s nature to inconvenience himself by bothering to find out who had time to help out on a case. He took whoever was closest.
‘Your case will just have to wait,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Make sure you’re ready. Our guy left town and is at a summer house out by Rørvig right now. There’s no telling how long he’ll be there.’
‘I don’t have anyone to put on that.’ Heilmann spoke calmly, but Louise could see her temper starting to flare below the serene surface. Willumsen gladly took advantage of Heilmann’s lack of authority: his rank was higher than hers.
‘Since you don’t even know who you’re looking for, it’s not like he’s going anywhere,’ Willumsen said. The senior sergeant turned on his heel and started to leave.
‘On the other hand, since you know exactly where your guy is, you could just get the police in Nykøbing to pick him up,’ Heilmann called after him, ‘and then search the house at your leisure afterwards.’
Willumsen stopped and slowly turned around.
‘It’s our case. The murder happened in Copenhagen, so we’ll apprehend him ourselves.’
Heilmann sighed and gave up. She suggested tersely that if he were going to take anyone from her group, he ought to take Toft and Stig.
‘I don’t fucking have time to run around looking for your men,’ he said. ‘Besides, they’re probably out bowling. Isn’t that what those two spend most of their time doing?’
Louise was just about to let loose on him for his snide insinuation, but managed to bite her tongue. Everyone in homicide knew that Thomas Toft and Michael Stig spent quite a bit of their free time roaming Denmark’s various bowling alleys to procure gold medals, to the delight of the Policemen’s Bowling League, but it was never at the expense of their duties.
Willumsen continued in the same tone, addressing Heilmann: ‘I expect you to come too. We’re heading out there together in three squad cars.’
Louise wondered if Willumsen grasped how abrasive he was when he was in this mood. He could be so unreasonable when he commandeered personnel from the other investigative groups, but then he always made a big stink whenever Lieutenant Suhr ordered him to hand over a couple of his officers if one of the other groups needed extra staff.
Heilmann kept a straight face when he left.
‘Toft and Stig are on their way up,’ she said as his footsteps faded away. ‘They were there when CCU analysed Susanne’s computer. We might as well accept that we have to go to Nykøbing, so we’ll pick up again with the photos tomorrow.’
The Computer Crime Unit was the official designation for the experts who could trace any activity that had occurred on a computer. Sometimes the detectives were able to do it themselves in-house, but since Susanne’s computer was pretty much the only lead they had to follow, it had been sent over to the CCU experts in the fraud unit.
‘God, I can’t stand that guy,’ Lars said after Heilmann left. He was sitting with his phone in his hand, and Louise guessed he was about to call his wife at home and let her know she was going to have to pick the kids up.
Lars had twin three-year-old boys whom they had adopted from Bolivia, and the first time they had visited the office with him they had pretty much managed to tear the place apart. During a second of inattention, they dumped the contents of several green case folders onto the floor, and when Louise returned from the bathroom they were sitting side by side, tossing the loose pages around – cute as anything, but clearly not conducive to professional productivity. She got the sense from her partner that he didn’t always mind being asked to stay late, although he loyally maintained that he did.
Louise tried to call Peter, but his phone went straight to voicemail, so she just left a quick message and added that she would call him again when she knew when he could count on seeing her. Then she stood up with a big sigh and went to join Willumsen’s group.
The location of the summer house had been marked on a map. When they were about a quarter of a mile away, Willumsen turned on his indicator and pulled over to the side of the road. He waved the two cars following him to pull over too. Everyone gathered around the bonnet of his car.
‘We got a tip from the local police this morning,’ he said. ‘We’ve been searching for this man, and an officer who lives in this area recognised the picture we sent out, and he called it in.’
Louise moved in a little closer, listening as Willumsen handed out assignments. Like Heilmann, Louise was having a little trouble understanding why he didn’t just have the local Nykøbing police bring the guy in and wait to take over himself once they were sure that they had the right guy.
‘The summer house is on a dead-end street,’ Willumsen continued, poking the map authoritatively with his finger.
Louise gave up on trying to make out all the details on the map and decided listening would be enough. Willumsen nodded at the officers who would take up positions around the house, then the two officers who would go in after the man.
‘Once we’ve got him, we’ll search everything. We’ve got good reason to believe he brought the items he wanted to dispose of with him. We’ll have to go over everything with a fine-tooth comb.’
Louise had already heard that there wasn’t anything at the woman’s address or in the suspect’s home that could connect him to the murder. Her body had been placed on a post near the suspect’s car, an older model white Peugeot 309. Louise stood so she had a good view of the front door of the summer home.
Willumsen looked around once before walking up to the front door and knocking. Everyone had their weapons d
rawn, and when the senior sergeant raised his hand and knocked again, Louise suddenly felt the weight of her pistol and holster. Arrests usually went off without a hitch, but she’d also seen them get out of hand, and it only took a second for that to happen.
The man was wearing tracksuit bottoms and denied having any knowledge of the woman Willumsen was talking about. Gesturing wildly with his arms, he uttered a bunch of loud complaints before two officers grabbed him from either side and led him back into the living room.
Louise stood behind the white Peugeot, waiting. A second later, her colleagues came to the door again with the man between them. Now he looked obstinate and furious as they led him over to one of the police cars and put him in the back seat.
Willumsen walked over to Louise.
‘You and Jørgensen drive him back to headquarters. I’ll stay here and lead the search.’
‘Aren’t you going to question him?’
They’d been looking for this guy since Saturday, and now suddenly there was no hurry to get him to talk?
‘Of course, but he’ll have to wait until we’ve searched the house.’
That made sense, but Louise didn’t understand the division of labour. The most obvious thing would be for Willumsen to take him back to police headquarters and get started with the questioning while the others conducted the search.
‘Just get a move on!’ he ordered.
What the fuck is he thinking, Louise wondered, not believing her ears. She looked around quickly for Heilmann, furious at having been roped into serving as a fucking chauffeur for some arrogant senior sergeant when she could have been using this time to go through photos with Susanne instead. Seething, she walked right past Willumsen to tell Heilmann that they were leaving.
Louise found Heilmann hunched over a dark-brown leather suitcase. Wearing white latex gloves, she was fishing out articles of clothing one by one. She just nodded absent-mindedly at Louise’s apologies and kept going through the clothes, completely wrapped up in her task. A mood of concentration pervaded the whole small wooden summer house, where officers were searching every room for hidden items. Louise gave up. Through the window, she saw Lars standing next to the car, looking for her, so she walked out to him.
The whole way to Copenhagen, the suspect sitting next to her in the back seat didn’t say anything; but as they approached police headquarters, he started talking loudly and quickly: ‘What do you want from me? Why are you doing this?’
‘It makes sense that the police want to talk to you,’ Louise interrupted. ‘Your wife was just murdered, and we haven’t been able to locate you until now.’
‘I loved my wife. I’m grieving,’ he yelled.
Louise tuned him out even though he kept on talking. Lars was sitting stiffly in the driver’s seat, like a robot, manoeuvring through traffic. At some point, the suspect started crying. Louise turned and shot him a dirty look.
‘Should we put him down in the basement?’ Lars asked over his shoulder.
‘Yeah, listening to this is unbearable. Willumsen will have to come get him when he gets back.’
They agreed that Louise would take the man down to the holding cells in the basement under the headquarters building while Lars drove the car over to the parking garage.
When they met up again in their office afterwards, Louise cast a tired glance around at the bare walls and noted that their office needed painting. It had only been a couple of months since their 1970s-era desks had been replaced by a newer style, with desktops whose height could be adjusted, but that just made everything else look even more out-of-date. The only personal touches were the two bulletin boards that she and Lars had covered with personal photos and souvenirs from some of their more spectacular cases. For example, they had put up the formula for how to make a light-green narcotic, which had been called green dust, and was a scourge throughout Copenhagen. Uncovering green dust was a case Louise’s friend Camilla had been very involved in and had nearly killed her.
Off on the right side of the bulletin board was an access card for an EU summit meeting. Louise thought that had been one of the most horrifically boring things she had ever had to do, but it was part of the compulsory duties that were occasionally part of being in the division.
She sat for a bit, collecting her thoughts as she let her eyes rest on her desktop, where there was a written phone message from Susanne, confirming that their appointment had been moved to the next day.
She called Peter at home and let him know she was on her way.
‘I’ll put on a pot of tea,’ he offered right away. ‘Have you eaten?’
Sometimes his motherly concern got on her nerves. She didn’t remember anyone ever making such a fuss over whether or not she’d eaten before she and Peter moved in together. Somehow, it made her uncomfortable. She convinced him that a cheese sandwich would be just fine.
7
Louise poured some coffee and moved the thermos flask to her right. Most of the people attending the morning briefing in the break room already knew about the arrest at the summer house outside Nykøbing Sjaelland for the murder of the immigrant woman, something they had been working on for several weeks. The ones who hadn’t been there or who had only heard about the man’s interrogation, which had lasted until late into the night, were sitting and listening with interest to Lieutenant Suhr’s account.
‘The couple had been separated for a good seven months. They’ve got two kids who were living with the mother in the apartment she was renting temporarily. There really wasn’t any problem at all, until the day she made it clear she didn’t want to get back together with him.’
‘We think,’ Willumsen interrupted, taking over, ‘that he must have picked the kids up on Saturday morning and dropped them off somewhere before going back for his ex-wife. That fits with the racket that an upstairs neighbour heard from the apartment around one o’clock in the afternoon. It’s hard to say if he planned to stab her to death or if it was an argument that got out of control, but she was murdered, stabbed nine times. He says he was with their kids until late Saturday afternoon, when he came back to drop them off, and he found her lying in a pool of blood in the living room.’
‘How does he explain running off to a summer house that no one in his circle of friends knew about?’ someone asked.
‘He doesn’t. He says he didn’t run off. To the contrary, he says he withdrew a little to “work through his grief”. Willumsen made air quotes with his fingers. ‘The CSI folks found his fingerprints all over his wife’s home.’
‘You need to find the knife or some clothes with her blood on them,’ Suhr said, standing up from where he’d been leaning on the edge of the table. ‘It’s not that hard to imagine him denying his guilt the whole way through and claiming that his fingerprints were obviously in her home since he regularly spent time there.’
Willumsen nodded. That was exactly what he himself had said before they arrested the man last night. Without any direct evidence, they would be in a weak position when they presented their side in court later that morning.
‘I’m sure we’ll find something,’ Willumsen said, ‘but there wasn’t anything at the summer house.’
‘How is it going with the rape case?’ someone asked.
Suhr came and stood by the end of the table where Heilmann, Louise and Lars were sitting.
‘Morgenavisen called me this morning. They’d like to know what we’re doing to track down the suspect.’
‘How do they know about that case?’ Louise demanded, lurching forward in her chair as she fought to slow her racing heartbeat and keep her face from going red. She made a concerted effort to maintain a professional distance from Morgenavisen, where her friend Camilla Lind was a reporter, so that no one could accuse Louise of leaking stories to her: Camilla had the Copenhagen crime beat at the paper.
‘That lady journalist of theirs got a call from Susanne Hansson’s mother last night,’ Suhr said.
Louise sighed and closed her eyes for a moment
.
Suhr had walked back over to the giant dry-erase board hanging at the far end of the break room. She opened her eyes again but avoided looking at him. She didn’t feel like listening to whatever he was about to say.
‘The mother of the victim was extremely upset that the police, quote, weren’t doing anything to find her daughter’s assailant.’
Louise could hear in his intonation that the mother hadn’t spared any details. ‘That bitch,’ she muttered, gulping down the remainder of her mostly cold coffee.
‘How far have you guys got on a description of the suspect? And what do we have that can identify him?’
He stood ready in front of the blank dry-erase board with an uncapped blue marker in his hand.
‘We still don’t have a usable description,’ Heilmann said. ‘The plan was for Rick to have Ms Hansson go through photos yesterday, but then the Nykøbing Sjaelland operation came up, so we had to postpone that until today.’
Heilmann calmly explained that they still didn’t know if there was enough biological material to run a DNA analysis, but the DNA lab was hoping to have the results later this week or early next. She said this a little hesitantly, because in reality it might also take until the week after next, and no one really wanted to think about that.
‘Could you then just explain why you guys went to Nykøbing when you’ve got more than enough on your plate here at home?’ Suhr asked with an undertone that Louise couldn’t interpret. Maybe Heilmann had told him how ridiculous it was that Louise and Lars had been ordered to go to Nykøbing when all they ended up doing was chauffeuring the suspect back to headquarters.
‘We were assisting because we were ordered to,’ Heilmann replied, gesturing by faintly nodding her head that the request had come from Willumsen. She stared directly at Lieutenant Suhr as she spoke.
Willumsen followed the whole thing, unconcerned.