Farewell to Freedom

by Sara Blaedel

“We found the Audi late yesterday afternoon,” he told Suhr. “And last night I installed a tracker on it. It’s parked out in Valby, and we just went and checked if it had been anywhere near Sønder Boulevard and the courtyard where the body was found. But it’s still in the same location and hasn’t been driven.”

  Louise learned that they had obtained a four-week wiretap warrant, and with the electronic chip Toft had mounted on the car they could now follow the dark Audi A4 via a screen in the command and control center.

  “One of the boys is monitoring it in there, so we’ll know the second he puts the key in the ignition. And we’re working on getting an interpreter to help with the wiretap,” Toft said, mostly to Suhr. “I hope it’s Igli. He does Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, and Czech. He’s going to call in around lunchtime and let us know if he’s available. I just talked to him, but he was at some little league soccer game out in Hvidovre and his son had just scored a goal. He had to go home and look at his calendar before he could make any promises.”

  Suhr nodded, satisfied. Igli was one of their best interpreters when it came to cases that involved people from the Balkans. He has been a police officer in the former Yugoslavia, and the homicide squad benefited from his experience whenever he worked with them on a case. Suhr asked Lars and Louise to go through Camilla’s account, from when she met Kaj to when they parted ways. Especially whether she had noticed anyone keeping an eye on them.

  Louise promised they would let him know.

  “I can’t bear it,” Camilla exclaimed after Suhr left. “It just occurred to me now that I put a couple hundred extra kroner on our tab for Kaj to use when I paid at the bar and obviously they had my name on the receipt for that. I just didn’t even think about it. I wanted to do something nice for him, as a kind of thank-you for the story. Plus I’d had a few too many beers to be thinking about things on that level.”

  Camilla hid her face in her hands, and Louise thought Mikkelsen must have had his reasons for not wanting to talk to Kaj until he could go visit him at his home where no one could see them. But she didn’t say anything, just put her hand on Camilla’s shoulder while Lars called Mikkelsen and told him about the two hundred kroner and the debit card receipt. When he hung up, Lars said someone would go talk to the waitress so they could find out if anyone had asked to see the receipt after Camilla had left.

  “So Michael Stig did see you out there that night,” Lars said, and Camilla nodded dully.

  “I just feel so awful about it,” Camilla said Sunday evening when they were sitting on Louise’s sofa over a bottle of red wine. “It feels every bit as bad as if I’d murdered him with my own hands. Anyway, it’s my fault he died such a gruesome death.”

  Louise listened and let her talk. At first she’d tried to contradict her and assuage her guilt, but Camilla had told her to stop that.

  “There’s no getting around it. I have to own up to what I did.”

  “Yeah, but for Pete’s sake, you were just doing your job. Neither you nor Kaj, for that matter, could have predicted that your conversation could have led to this.”

  “I mean, he was talking to me to protect himself,” Camilla reminded herself. “Otherwise he could have just gone to you guys. If he’d done that, he might still be alive.”

  Louise filled her glass, but held back on Camilla’s.

  “You were protecting him,” Louise said and got up to light a few candles in the living room. She went over to the stereo and put Big Fat Snake on repeat before sinking back down onto the sofa. “But you didn’t need to go in to the paper today and write that article about your own role in the killing. Why are you putting all the blame on yourself? And so publicly?”

  Camilla looked at her, her eyes unflinching, as if Louise was the edge of a cliff between her and the abyss.

  “There’s no doubt what triggered everything yesterday,” Camilla said plainly. “It’s horrific every way you look at it, but I have to stand by it. And the readers deserve to know the kind of ruthless sickos we’re dealing with here. Besides, I’ve seen way too many reporters stick their tails between their legs and refuse to take responsibility when they push their sources over the edge by leaking information and digging up dirt. I mean, you can’t stoop any lower than that.”

  They stopped by Camilla’s place and packed her a bag of clothes and toiletries to take to Louise’s apartment, and, contrary to expectations, Camilla didn’t protest.

  “I told the paper I wanted to take a leave of absence,” Camilla said suddenly, with her toothbrush in her hand, after Louise had made up the guest room. “And if they don’t give it to me, I’m going to quit. But I think I’m going to quit anyway,” she added after a moment’s thought.

  Louise nodded. She had spoken with Camilla’s boss herself. He was deeply concerned about one of his top reporters and told Louise he was prepared to support her. In the end, he was the one who’d run her byline photo with the article without thinking about it.

  “I’d really like your permission to call a crisis psychologist I know at National Hospital,” Louise said from the doorway to the guest room once Camilla was tucked into bed. “His name’s Jakobsen. He’s really good. And there’s no point in your beating yourself up with all this guilt. There’s really a risk all this will overwhelm you.”

  Louise expected a bunch of protests; so when they didn’t come, she could almost hear her pre-planned, must-convince-Camilla speech crash and burn.

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Camilla said, turning off the light.

  19

  “I’M GUESSING THEY WANTED TO SECURE HIS TONGUE SO HE couldn’t scream,” Flemming Larsen said as he and Louise sat in his office Monday morning following the autopsy. “Given the configuration of the courtyard, the killer or killers were probably standing in the archway waiting for him. They grabbed him from behind and plunged the knife under his chin so it attached his tongue to his palate. That silenced him while they dragged him into the courtyard and splayed him out between the four benches.”

  “Which is why no one heard anything.”

  Louise took one of the two sodas Flemming brought up to his office from the vending machine and was glad that he, too, valued their friendship enough to take a little extra time to discuss the autopsy with her.

  Her mind filled with images of the courtyard off Sønder Boulevard. There had been a number of bikes along the wall of the building in front of the garbage cans, so someone could easily have entered the courtyard while the murder was taking place, she thought, picturing the location of Kaj’s body.

  “How long did it take for him to die?” she wondered aloud, looking over at Flemming, who was almost done with his Fanta.

  “We know he was still alive when he was tied to the benches. You yourself saw that his hands were dark and filled with blood,” Flemming said, and added that they were also a little swollen. “That tells us there was still circulation in his body.”

  Louise nodded as he spoke and peered down at a couple of the crime-scene photos showing enlargements of the details on his hands and throat.

  “He has red foam around his mouth,” Flemming continued. “That means he started aspirating his own blood. The blood that goes down the trachea froths up as the victim breathes rapidly out of fear. So I’m sure he lived for a while before he asphyxiated.”

  Louise closed her eyes for a moment, acknowledging the shiver of horror that traveled through her body.

  “In other words, he choked on his own blood,” she said, opening her eyes again.

  The gravity of the situation had drawn a deep wrinkle across the tall coroner’s forehead. He nodded thoughtfully.

  “As long as his tongue was stuck, he couldn’t swallow. After that, it looks like they turned the knife around and pulled it, creating a long incision which sliced open his throat and trachea longitudinally all the way down to his breastbone, where the incision fades away on the left side of the anterior thorax.”

  Louise couldn’t hide the shudder that coursed
through her, and she knew Flemming well enough to tell that he, too, was profoundly affected by the depravity of this murder.

  “They knew exactly what they wanted to do with this execution,” she said blocking out the light and sounds for a second while the pieces of this portrait of bestiality fell into place.

  “To show everyone in that world that you keep your mouth shut if you see something,” Flemming said, finishing her idea.

  Their eyes met as that fact became clear.

  “And all the same, they took the time to tie him up and do the job thoroughly before leaving him there in the courtyard. Which shows that whoever did this couldn’t have cared less if anyone happened to walk into the courtyard and catch him in the act,” Flemming concluded.

  Louise got up and stuck the crime-scene techs’ pictures back into the bag. Flemming came over and put his arms around her shoulders, looking into her eyes the whole time.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  Louise sighed and shrugged.

  “Mostly it’s Camilla who’s not okay,” she responded. “I just really want to find out who’s evil enough to subject a harmless elderly man to this. I mean, here’s the evidence of how pointlessly brutal Eastern European crime gangs are—and apparently we’ve got them here in Copenhagen now, too.”

  “Yeah, you have to admit these people are more ruthless than the criminals we’re used to,” Flemming admitted, pulling Louise into a slow embrace as they reached the elevator.

  “Take care of yourself,” he told her, as the elevator door opened in front of them.

  Louise gave his hand a squeeze and thanked him for the soda, before stepping in and pressing the LOBBY button to return to Police Headquarters and her Monday briefing, which had been pushed back until after the autopsy.

  “This morning our interpreter, Igli, intercepted information that Arian is going to go pick someone up at the airport this afternoon,” Willumsen reported once everyone was gathered around the circular conference table in Suhr’s office. “It’s Sterling flight NB564 scheduled to arrive from Prague at 1:55 P.M.,” he continued. “And I want all four of you out there. We’re going to get to the fucking bottom of what’s going on now. Before they slaughter anyone else.”

  Toft nodded.

  “Do you want us to follow his car out there? Or not make contact until he reaches the arrivals hall?” he asked, looking from Willumsen to Suhr.

  “You two go wait at the airport,” Willumsen responded, pointing to Toft and Stig. “Louise and Lars will tail them out there. But stay well back. Don’t let them see you.”

  “We’re just going to be watching,” Suhr added.

  The group’s mood had been tense ever since Kaj Antonsen’s murder. Everyone had realized that they were going up against people who did not value human life the way you might expect, and it was still fairly rare to encounter this type of criminal in Denmark, even here in the capital.

  “Get out there and get into position. It’s less than two hours until the plane lands, and I don’t want you running through the airport at the last minute,” Willumsen commanded. “From now on, we’re going be right on their asses.”

  Then he realized he was sending mixed signals, so he started again and said clearly that everything should take place without their being detected.

  “And when you leave the airport, Toft and Stig will come back here and focus on the wiretap, and Rick and Jørgensen will stay on the two Albanians so we know where they go. Then everyone come back here. We have to find out what they’re up to before we can plan our next move.”

  Louise and Lars were parked at opposite ends of the underground parking lot when Arian and his passenger drove their Audi down to P6 under Terminal 3.

  They walked over to the elevator slowly, but there was a crowd of people with suitcases waiting to go up, so Louise pulled her partner over to the stairs instead. Up in the arrivals hall, they quickly spotted Toft and Stig, one of them with a newspaper, the other with a cup of coffee, expectantly eying the passengers as they emerged through customs. Louise nodded quickly at the elevator and walked over to the arrivals screen, where she confirmed that the flight from Prague had just landed, five minutes ahead of schedule.

  The two Albanians emerged from the elevator at that moment. They quickly checked on the arrival status and went to stand by the opening where the passengers came out.

  “Do we guess the short-haired one is Hamdi? He matches the description Pavlína gave and there is certainly no doubt that the driver is identical to the owner of the car,” Louise told her partner, who nodded without taking his eyes off Arian with his should-length, slicked-back hair and glasses.

  After waiting ten minutes with only a trickle of people clearing customs, a large group of travelers pulling suitcases appeared. Hamdi held up a white sign, but Louise couldn’t see what it said from where she was standing. Stig walked right in front of her then, heading for a trash can to throw away his empty coffee cup.

  Louise watched him.

  “Ilana,” he said on his way back past them as he returned from the trashcan.

  None of the new arrivals reacted to the sign, nor any from the next group, who came streaming out of customs and spread out in all directions. Louise walked over to the arrivals screen and saw that the baggage had already been assigned to a carousel. Which meant that the passengers could be out at any point. When she turned around to walk back over to her partner, she stopped and suddenly took a step to the left to avoid a column.

  Over along the opposite wall she had caught a glimpse of bangs that had been cut just over the eyebrows. It was Pavlína, and Miloš Vituk was next to her. Both of them had their eyes trained on the two Albanians, who were steadily watching the stream of emerging travelers.

  Louise walked back over to Lars and nodded in their direction.

  “Did you see when they arrived?”

  He shook his head. “But they obviously aren’t particularly eager to be seen,” he remarked, returning his focus once again to the arriving passengers.

  Louise agreed with him and followed along with curiosity when Pavlína suddenly took a few steps forward toward a young woman with long blonde hair who was carrying a big bag over her shoulder. The woman was almost all the way to the door out to where the cabs were before Pavlína and Miloš made their presence known. After the two women greeted each other, Miloš gallantly offered to carry her bag and they quickly walked toward the entrance to the train station underneath the arrivals hall.

  “So who was that?” Lars asked after the three of them disappeared down the stairs to platforms 3 and 4.

  “Maybe her sister,” Louise suggested, shrugging her shoulders, and then adding that of course it could also have been a friend coming to visit.

  The two Albanians apparently hadn’t noticed the other reunion, and were still standing there scanning the stream of people coming out of customs. The little luggage icon wasn’t flashing on the screen anymore, which meant that all the baggage had been unloaded.

  After ten minutes they saw Arian take out his cell, and a moment later he stepped back from the crowd and spoke, gesticulating vigorously with his free arm. He walked over to the window that looked out over the luggage return carousels and scanned the area, but then came back and said something to Hamdi. It wasn’t hard to tell from their body language that they were impatient and that something hadn’t gone according to plan. They were pacing back and forth in front of the exit from customs.

  Twenty minutes later Arian made another call.

  “I’m going to go over to the police service desk,” Louise suggested. “From there I can call Documentation and find out if there were any problems with the flight arriving from Prague. You hold the fort here, okay?”

  Louise walked over to the office that was in the corridor between arrivals and departures. She had a hard time imagining that the Documentation Group with the Danish National Police would be interested in an arrival from the Czech Republic, since anyone traveling between E
uropean Union member states that were covered by the Schengen Agreement could just walk right through without showing a passport—but obviously security might have flagged the flight, in which case passengers would have to show their passports. Maybe they had detained Ilana for something like that.

  Louise greeted a young officer and showed her police badge before asking if he could get in touch with a person from Documentation and whoever was currently in charge of Concourse C, where the flight had landed, to see if the flight had had any security flags.

  “Ask him if they detained anyone, and ask him to check and see if there was a passenger with the first name ‘Ilana’ on the flight manifest for Sterling NB564 from Prague.”

  Louise waited patiently while he checked. Documentation didn’t have anything. It took a little longer to access the flight manifest, but when the officer on duty called him back five minutes later, he was able to report that an Ilana Procházková was on the manifest but that she had never checked in.

  Louise thanked him for his help. It wasn’t hard to see that the young officer was curious, but he refrained from asking what was wrong when she didn’t volunteer anything.

  “Let’s see what happens,” Lars said when Louise returned. “I’m sure they’ll give up at some point and drive back into town. At least now we’ve put faces to the names,” he said, trying to look at the bright side of a trip that hadn’t turned up anything useful.

  Louise nodded and glanced over at the men, wondering which had done the knife-work in Kødbyen. Since Arian owned the car and apparently also did the driving, she guessed it was Hamdi who had jumped out of the back seat.

  The two Albanians gave up an hour later and drove back to Copenhagen, and the whole way back in from Kastrup Airport, Louise and Lars took turns with their two colleagues tailing the dark Audi.

  “Remember to maintain eye contact if he looks at you,” Lars warned when they pulled right up next to the car at a stop light in Amager at one point.