by Sara Blaedel
Louise nodded and watched him disappear, his steps precise and determined, making his gait a little stiff. The others had already taken up their positions around the steel table when Louise entered, walking back over to the lab stool, ready to continue taking notes.
‘Oral cavity and nasopharynx filled with vomit. Same colour as gastric contents,’ she wrote, listening as Flemming explained that this was a case of asphyxia secondary to an internal obstruction. The victim would have lost consciousness quickly, probably within one minute.
‘She was dead after about five minutes,’ he said.
Louise’s hand was getting tired from writing in an awkward position, perched on a stool with her pad balanced on her knee.
‘He used a hard object in her vagina. I’m guessing it was the dildo we found on the floor next to the bed. There are incised wounds, the edges are reddish, and there is blood around the opening,’ Flemming announced.
Louise let the words flow onto the paper, but avoided looking over while the woman’s gynaecological examination was going on.
An hour later, they were done. Flemming didn’t pause during the exam, but he did look over at Louise when he determined that the victim would still be alive now if the tape had been removed from her mouth.
She nodded, following his train of thought: Did the perp sit there, watching her suffocate?
Louise accompanied Flemming back to his office after they said goodbye to Åse and Klein on the stairs.
She sat down in the chair across from his desk, her notepad still in her hand. She followed him with her eyes as he checked his messages and looked around for any notes that might have been placed on his desk.
Flemming sat down. His tall body made the desk and the chair under him look small. His desk was stacked with paper and folders, a hilly landscape leaving almost no free space on the desktop. They sat there in silence for a moment before he finally confirmed what she had pieced together herself.
‘The vomiting occurred right after the gag in her mouth shifted, triggering her gag reflex.’
Louise didn’t say anything, waiting for the rest.
‘When you look at the blows she sustained, it is reasonable to assume that the gag shifted because he hit her …’
She completed his thought for him: ‘So he watched her die and didn’t help?’
Flemming shrugged and said, ‘That’s a reasonable supposition.’
Louise shivered.
‘I don’t think he likes women very much,’ Flemming added.
His comment interrupted Louise’s train of thought and fed the rising wave of hostility in her.
‘You don’t say,’ she exclaimed sarcastically. ‘He assaulted her, raped her, and then sat and watched her suffocate. Yeah, you don’t need to convince me that he feels nothing but contempt for the opposite sex.’
They parted ways outside the main entrance to the lab, agreeing to talk again when the autopsy report was finished, if there was anything in it that required further clarification. Flemming walked her out and then went back inside. As the glass doors closed behind him, it occurred to Louise that Peter had dropped her off that morning, so she didn’t have her car or her bike with her.
Irritated, she started walking south down busy Blegdamsvej. It was almost one in the afternoon. She flipped open her phone and called Heilmann to say she was on her way back in.
Heilmann asked, ‘Could you go out to Susanne Hansson’s place and tell her what happened, so she’ll be prepared when it leaks to the press?’ Louise stopped for a moment as Heilmann spoke, and then slowly turned and started heading towards a bus stop. ‘I just spoke to her at her mother’s apartment, and I asked her to stay put until we arrive,’ Heilmann continued. ‘And I explained that a new situation had arisen that we wanted to brief her on.’
Louise nodded, looking straight ahead. A new situation! You could certainly call it that. At any rate, it was now clear that the perp was far more antisocial than they had previously assumed.
‘Maybe we should find out if there’s somewhere else she could stay until we catch him,’ Heilmann suggested. ‘Given the developments, there’s a good chance he may decide to go back and stop her from telling us anything else.’
‘The only thing I’m certain about is that there’s no limit to what he may do. The stakes are definitely higher now,’ Louise responded as she fished out her bus pass, thinking how ridiculous it was that she was being forced to take the bus to see a witness.
‘Are you going to stop by headquarters before you go back out to Valby, then?’
‘Nope. I just got on a bus. I’m going straight there.’
Louise could hear Heilmann’s smile.
‘I’ll ask Lars to drive out there and pick you up when you’re done talking to her. Then you two can also stop and check out the most recent crime scene.’
15
‘There are numerous indications that Jesper Bjergholdt’ – Louise and Lars had decided to continue calling him that until they determined his real identity – ‘has just committed another very serious crime, which cost a young woman her life.’
Louise spoke slowly, gift-wrapping her words. She rolled, folded and tied little bows around each individual sentence. Still, there was no mistaking her meaning. It could have been Susanne who ended up on that stainless steel autopsy table. That was really what she was saying, and Susanne got the message – although she tried to distance herself from it emotionally.
‘But you’re saying it was an accident that she died?’ Susanne said hesitantly.
Louise nodded, but her gesture was not convincing. Then she continued: ‘He didn’t plan for the gag to slide back into her mouth and make her throw up. But he didn’t help her, either, when it happened. He did nothing to save her. On the contrary, he let her die.’
The indifferent expression that had clouded Susanne’s face since the first time Louise met her at Hvidovre Hospital had returned. Susanne’s eyes moved slowly. Just from looking at her, the amount of effort it took for her to pull herself together before she finally said something was evident.
‘How can you know it’s the same person who did this?’ she asked.
‘We can’t know for sure yet, but it’s the same M.O.,’ Louise replied, realising as she said this that Susanne didn’t understand what she meant. ‘The details of what happened to you have not been made public. No one knows about the cable ties he used or the gag you had in your mouth. So it’s reasonable to assume that this is the same man, not a copycat.’
Susanne’s head made a couple of small, mechanical nods as Louise spoke, but she didn’t seem as though any of it was registering. Her whole body had started trembling. She wasn’t crying, just sitting there shaking as though a fist were rattling her body from head to toe. In silence she rocked back and forth with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. She shut Louise out and disappeared into her own hollow world.
Louise contemplated going to the living room and calling Susanne’s mother, but instead she remained seated, laying her hand on Susanne’s shoulder. Maybe this wasn’t the right time
to talk about moving to another location, she thought. It seemed almost abusive to force this fragile woman to deal with anything else by highlighting the risk that her assailant might come back looking for her in the near future. On the other hand, Susanne might be thinking these same thoughts right now, on her own. Maybe her fear of this provoked all the shivering. She might even find the idea of moving somewhere else comforting.
While Louise sat there thinking this through, she pulled out her mobile and texted Lars that he would have to be patient because she couldn’t leave Susanne quite yet.
‘Of course you feel scared because he’s not in custody yet,’ Louise tried.
No reaction.
‘Our sergeant suggested it might be a good idea for you to move somewhere else while we look for him,’ Louise continued. She spoke in a subdued voice and patted Susanne’s shoulder until she started to calm down and the tension in her bo
dy abated a bit. ‘Do you have someone you could stay with for a while?’
Susanne seemed to consider that, but then shook her head. They sat in silence for a moment.
‘Is he going to come back?’ Susanne asked, looking up. She no longer had the vacant stare, but Louise couldn’t interpret what her eyes were hiding. Maybe fear, but Louise didn’t think so. Perhaps doubt, or failure to comprehend. Or a fear of something else that Louise just couldn’t relate to.
‘I don’t know,’ Louise answered honestly. ‘But there is a risk. You do know what he looks like, so you could identify him.’
‘Yeah, but I can’t remember!’ Susanne burst out.
‘True, but he doesn’t know that.’
‘Then say that. Get them to write that, that I can’t remember anything.’ Her tears welled up and her voice was desperate.
Louise squeezed Susanne’s shoulder and started patting her back again in a soothing motion. ‘Well, maybe that’s what we should do. But then your whole story will come out, and that might not be that pleasant. Worse, perhaps.’
Susanne’s shoulders relaxed a little. ‘That doesn’t matter,’ she said hoarsely, wiping her nose. ‘It’s worse walking around like this, without anyone knowing why.’ Silence settled between them before Susanne started to explain what she meant.
‘I went to work on Friday …’ Susanne had to push the first few words out; but once she got started, it came out as a torrent. ‘But it was no good. I left again after two hours. People were staring at me, and I could tell they were all talking about me. But no one came over and asked me why my face looks this way. Everyone was avoiding me, even though their eyes were following me everywhere. I couldn’t stand it, so I left.’
‘I think you should seriously consider staying somewhere else for a while,’ Louise repeated, overcome with compassion. She knew how weird people get about other people’s suffering and how this weirdness creates a distance that is often painful. Plus, the weirdness happens right when the person can least cope with feeling rejected by friends and co-workers.
‘I can also check to see if we could find somewhere for you to stay for a while,’ Louise offered, collecting her things. Susanne was so calm that Louise thought it would be all right for her to leave now.
‘Think it over,’ Louise urged. ‘We can talk about it tonight or tomorrow. Also, I picked up your cardigan that you forgot at the restaurant in Tivoli, but the technicians are looking it over right now. As soon as they’re done with it, you can have it back.’
Louise wrote her phone number on a piece of paper and told Susanne to call if anything happened that made her feel unsafe. ‘Or, if you think of somewhere you could stay,’ she added. ‘You’re also welcome to call if you just want to talk to someone.’
Louise rarely included that last comment in her standard spiel to witnesses, because there were people who took it as a standing invitation to call and go on and on about whatever. Louise decided to offer it to Susanne because it seemed to her that Susanne wasn’t going to get anything out of talking to her own mother – in fact, it would probably be better for Susanne if she didn’t bother.
Thank God that woman had to go do some shopping, Louise thought. Before she left, Susanne’s mother had actually stuck her head into the room to nag Susanne and to reassure Louise that she certainly appreciated the wisdom of keeping the press out of things for now. But Susanne’s mother also said that she would not tolerate the police putting the case on the back burner – as she had also explained to ‘that delightful gentleman the police had sent over’.
‘If you don’t find that man who molested my daughter,’ Susanne’s mother continued, ‘then I’ll be forced to go to the press again and ask for their help.’ She sounded like a patient defending her right to see a dentist to have an abscess removed.
During her entire tirade, the mother had not once noticed Susanne rocking side to side, her eyes completely vacant.
Louise couldn’t be bothered to respond, which offended Susanne’s mother, who slammed the door behind her as she left in a huff.
Louise gave Susanne’s arm one final squeeze and then stood up and said goodbye.
Down on the street below, Lars was illegally parked in the narrow drive that led to the building’s inner courtyard. Louise slid into the passenger seat and sat there in silence as they headed out to Frederiksberg.
‘How’s your son?’ she asked as they made their way over Valby Hill. She was watching the cyclists struggling up it, their legs working in laboured strokes.
‘He needed seven stitches,’ Lars replied.
Louise nodded, still looking straight ahead.
‘And now the other one has a fever,’ Lars continued.
‘Oh, thank God I don’t have kids!’ Louise blurted out. She usually kept these types of thoughts to herself, but she didn’t manage to catch this one in time.
Her partner glanced over and smiled indulgently – and a tad enviously, Louise suspected.
She was waiting for him to ask about the autopsy, but since he obviously figured she would just start talking about it, the silence ended up becoming awkward.
‘He could have saved her,’ she began. ‘Flemming thinks the gag slipped back in her mouth when the perp knocked her over. If that’s true, then she died within five minutes, and there’s no fucking way he couldn’t have noticed. She lost consciousness almost immediately.’
Lars’s jaw muscles tensed. ‘We have got to get this guy.’
That indulgent smile he had given her as they discussed sick children was suddenly gone, replaced by an expression of single-minded determination.
‘Toft and Stig are looking through Christina’s computer,’ Lars said. ‘They’ll hand it over to CCU tomorrow. This time, there have to be some fucking leads to go on. Every move he makes can’t be so carefully thought out. He’s bound to slip up on something.’
Louise shrugged. Lars noticed this out of the corner of his eye and put more resolve in his voice.
‘He must have written something we can use,’ he continued, turning to look at her.
‘He could have written all kinds of things. It doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll find him,’ Louise retorted. ‘He could be sitting in an internet café God knows where, luring his next victim into his trap at this very moment, and we have no way of knowing he’s at it again.’
‘Why are all the fucking streets out here one-way?’ Lars growled, testily backing up while ranting about the neighbourhood streets around the Frederiksberg neighbourhood swimming centre.
Louise was astonished and didn’t respond. Her partner rarely lost his temper like that. They were both worked up, professionally and personally, and aggression was a natural way to deal with that.
She inhaled all the way down to her stomach and slowly exhaled before continuing.
‘We have to persuade Suhr to warn the public about this guy,’ she said. ‘And then he’ll have to assign extra personnel to watch the phones if he doesn’t think we’ll have time to talk to each of the frightened women who will inevitably call in and start indiscriminately reporting men by the truckload …’
She took another deep breath. ‘I wonder how much he already has planned out as he sits at the computer writing his charming emails,’ she mulled.
Her voice had grown calm again, and that clearly rubbed off on her colleague.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Lars said, ‘if he has pictured, to the smallest detail, what it will sound like when he tightens the cable ties around the women’s hands and feet. How the plastic teeth will slide through the locking mechanism with small, sharp clicks.’ Lars made smacking sounds with his tongue to illustrate. ‘The mere fact that he brings his “rape case” with him on dates shows that he’s planning to go all the way before he even leaves home,’ he concluded and then, after a short pause, added, ‘Anyway, none of my male friends bring plastic strips, duct tape and condoms along with them in their briefcases.’
He pulled into some angle parking under
the trees on Adilsvej. The quiet street in the Frederiksberg neighbourhood wasn’t far from where Camilla lived, so Louise knew the area. They walked toward the entrance.
One of the crime-scene investigators’ blue emergency response vans had pulled over between two NO PARKING signs. Christina Lerche had lived on the second floor.
Louise tried the handle of the locked main door before calling up on the security phone. She stood there peering up at the building while they waited to be buzzed in. Upstairs in the entry of Christina’s apartment, they stepped over a toilet and bathroom sink that the CSIs had removed to inspect the drainage pipes and sewer line underneath.
‘Have you found anything?’ Louise asked from the hallway, calling into the bathroom where two investigators were leaning over the open drain.
‘We can always hope that he was dumb enough to flush the condom down the toilet. Or maybe he took the time to rinse his penis in the sink before he packed up his things,’ said Frandsen, the lead forensic specialist. He smiled optimistically and waved at Lars, before going back to concentrating on the drainpipe.
‘What about fingerprints from the bedroom?’ Louise asked.
‘They were good. But we don’t have a match for them in our database, so it’s not a guy we’ve dealt with before.’
Well, that definitively rules out Karsten Flintholm, Louise thought. His fingerprints were in the archive. She watched Frandsen as he got up to join them in the hallway. He fished his pipe out of his white overalls before walking off toward the bedroom with it. It wasn’t customary to smoke at a crime scene, and Louise had never seen him actually light the pipe.
Louise stopped in the doorway to the bedroom, astonished. A large hole had been cut in the wall between the bedroom and the living room.
‘It’s not a load-bearing wall or anything,’ Frandsen said, smiling and taking the pipe out of his mouth. ‘There was evidence of the struggle on that section. I didn’t want to risk not getting the whole thing, so we just took the wall down and ran it through the superglue-fuming chamber.’