by Sara Blaedel
The sun was shining and down on the street below people were walking around in their shirtsleeves or lightweight jackets. She stuck her bare feet into a pair of Adidas sneakers Louise had sitting in her hallway and pulled a white sweater on over her head. She pulled her blonde hair into a loose ponytail. Her Mulberry purse was the only thing that revealed that she was normally much more put together.
She walked all the way down Gammel Kongevej to Central Station. She wanted to go to Plaza, where Kaj had reigned in the kitchen in his day, and she thought she might settle for a cup of coffee in the bar. The sun hurt her eyes. She’d forgotten her sunglasses, so she walked with her eyes squinted, heading into the bright daylight. It wasn’t until she passed the planetarium that it occurred to her that the Plaza had been sold many times since the legendary hotel magnate had owned it and turned it into something special. Several international hotel chains had owned it since, so there probably wasn’t much of Kaj’s spirit left. She decided to get her coffee from somewhere inside Central Station instead. There was also something appealing about the idea of sitting in there and being an anonymous face in the crowd. Blending in with all the other strangers who were just passing through.
She took a free paper from the holder on her way in and walked down through the high-ceilinged railroad station concourse with its shops and newsstands along one side and the stairways down to the train tracks on the other. There weren’t very many people in the DSB café, so she tossed her papers on an empty table and went up to the window to get a coffee.
The Meat Baron. She didn’t know what he looked like, had only seen his silhouette behind the steering wheel of the dark-green Jaguar, and then she’d heard his story. But if she went down to Kødbyen, surely someone would know who he was. She wanted to hear more about Kaj’s time as chef when everything had been different.
There were more people in the café. Some of them knew each other and chatted briefly before they hurried on, Danish mixed with foreign languages. She watched lazily as people came and went.
After half an hour, she folded up her newspapers and drank the last of her cold coffee before getting up to go.
Down past the convention center along Kvægtorvsgade past Rysensteen High School toward Halmtorvet. She had her eyes on the ground and didn’t see the Audi or have a chance to react when a guy with dark hair said her name and grabbed her arm.
37
LOUISE RAN UP THE STAIRS TO HER FOURTH-FLOOR APARTMENT, and when she put her key in the lock she was a little surprised to realize she could still run up the stairs without getting winded, even though she hadn’t gotten to run much lately.
“Hello?” she yelled as she entered.
The guest room door was open and both beds were unmade and empty. Louise went to the kitchen to see if there was a note and then knocked on the bathroom door.
It didn’t take her even half a minute to determine that Camilla wasn’t in the apartment. She saw Camilla’s jacket still hanging on the hook, but noticed that her purse was gone. She tried calling her again. A female voice had only just started to tell her that the number she’d called was not in service when she spotted the Sony Ericsson on the nightstand next to Camilla’s bed, turned off.
She stood leaning against the doorframe for a second, wondering if she ought to start looking for Camilla. She decided it would be almost impossible to know where her friend had gone. The only obvious place was if she’d gone home to her own apartment for some clean clothes.
Louise tried Camilla’s home number, but no one answered. Louise felt the concern that had flitted through her earlier now take a firmer hold. A glance at the clock showed that it was 11:30. She was going to have to drive if she was going to have time to stop and see Pastor Holm and be back to Police Headquarters by 1:00 as she’d promised.
She locked her apartment door behind her and found Flemming Larsen’s direct number at the pathology lab. Even though he was probably down in the autopsy rooms working, she needed to try to get ahold of him and ask about the blood tests. Visiting all the new mothers the hospitals had records of would be a waste of time if it turned out that the baby had been born to a drug addict. Or it would rule out a large percentage of potential suspects. Stig had had a good point.
“They’re not back yet,” the secretary told her after checking for the blood test results. Then the woman explained that she didn’t expect Larsen to be done until sometime between two and three that afternoon. “They’ve got a busy schedule after the weekend.”
Louise thanked her and said that she’d call back later.
The trip out to Stenhøj Church took her ten minutes. Louise had called to let Henrik Holm know that she would be stopping by, and he didn’t sound that curious as to why, so she decided to wait and explain when she got there.
He greeted her with a smile and thanked her again and again for having watched Jonas.
“He had a great time and thinks it’s the coolest thing ever that you’re a police officer,” he said after they’d taken a seat in the kitchen.
“Ah, yes. Well, that’s actually why I’m here,” she said, seizing the opportunity. “In my official capacity as a police officer, that is.”
Henrik raised an eyebrow and cocked his head at her.
“The case of the deceased baby we found Saturday was officially assigned to us this morning,” she began, adding that it had wound up on her desk specifically. Then she explained that they’d done the autopsy on the baby on Sunday. “The pathologist says he was stillborn. His lungs, heart, and other internal organs were fully developed, so the baby was viable. The cause of death was chorioamnionitis, or a bacterial infection of the amniotic fluid.”
Henrik’s eyebrow was still raised.
“In the worst cases, it can kill both the mother and the baby.”
He nodded, and his eyebrow finally returned to its normal position.
“Something else was discovered during the autopsy, which is actually the reason the case was transferred to the homicide squad. After the birth, one of the baby’s pinky toes was removed. The pathologist is certain that this was not a birth defect.”
She decided to spare him the details and avoided telling him that Flemming had noted that this had been done with a knife, scissors, or pincers.
She saw the look in his eyes change. Henrik leaned back on the bench and looked at her, as if he didn’t quite understand. An uncertain shadow flitted over his face.
“Is it possible that the child had a defect in the toe, so the parents removed it before they placed him in the church?” he suggested.
“In principle, yes,” Louise consented, “but the fact that someone harmed the dead infant makes the act a criminal matter. As opposed to before, when we considered it a deeply tragic and sorrowful event, which is what it is when someone decides to abandon a stillborn baby.”
“Some babies are stillborn,” the pastor said absentmindedly. He looked through the living room, out at the tops of the trees in the yard. “As far as I can remember, there were about 320 stillbirths in 2005.”
He didn’t say anything else, and they sat there for a bit before Louise explained that the Bellahøj precinct still had officers on the case, but that she and her partner were now officially in charge.
“We have a couple of witnesses who saw a light-green Fiat Regatta parked outside the cemetery early Saturday morning. Does that mean anything to you?” Louise asked. She was surprised when he nodded and made a face.
He ran his fingers through his wiry blonde hair as if he needed to pull himself together before he got sidetracked. This left his hair somewhat tousled.
“If it’s the people I’m thinking of, Otto Birch, my sexton, has had problems with them before,” he said and then smiled a crooked smile. “It’s a middle-aged couple. I’m guessing they’re in their late forties or early fifties. We’ve caught them having sex in the cemetery several times. That’s a bizarre thing to be turned on by, and Otto has thrown them out several times and forbidden them from comin
g here, but I’ve never heard yet of a person getting a restraining order against coming to a cemetery.”
He laughed wryly.
“Now they’ve started coming at times when they don’t think we’ll catch them. It used to be mostly in the evening, as if this were part of their evening stroll.”
He shook his head and stood up.
Louise had the sense he wanted to go back to what he’d been doing before she arrived, and asked if he knew the couple’s name.
“No, unfortunately I can’t help you there. Otto just tried to scare them away. He threatened to report them to the police, but he never made a big enough deal out of it to ask their names.”
Louise set her card on the table and said that he should just call if he had any questions or wanted to find out how the investigation was coming.
She was almost out the door when she turned around and added that unfortunately there was no getting out of having the church in the spotlight again because of this.
“If my boss hasn’t already called, I’m sure he will,” she said, and explained that Suhr wanted to appeal to the public in the hopes of finding witnesses.
Henrik nodded absentmindedly. Despite his previous concerns, it didn’t appear to bother him that both of the big news shows wanted to use his church in their broadcasts. At the last minute, it occurred to Louise that she probably should explain that the baby’s pinky toe was something they wanted to keep confidential.
“We would prefer not to have that made public.”
“Of course,” he said distractedly.
38
“CAMILLA LIND.”
He repeated her name twice before she turned to look at him. The glasses’ metal frames reflected the sunlight and her arm hurt. She tried to yank it back. She ought to have been feeling nervous, but instead she felt a rage that only grew when he continued to clench her, like a vise being tightened around her bone.
“Let me go,” she hissed, trying to break free again as he pushed her up against the wall of the building and held her with both hands. A bicyclist rode past, but looked away when she tried to make eye contact with him.
“We know you were the one who wrote the article about that wino who saw a car like mine down on Skelbækgade. And we’d like to have a little chat with you,” he said, receiving help from a second guy she hadn’t noticed until he started pulling her over to the car, which was stopped with the motor idling out in the lane of traffic.
“I don’t have anything to talk to you about,” she said, but felt her rage withdrawing, making room for the fear that suddenly rushed through her with such force that her throat constricted.
Why hadn’t it occurred to her that they might come after her the way they’d gone after Kaj? Finally, she felt something move inside her body, but they shoved her into the back seat so hard they knocked the wind out of her and then slammed the door shut.
A second later one of them got in behind the wheel and the other climbed into the back seat with her, keeping a hand on her shoulder, tightening his grip any time she made the slightest movement. As the Audi started moving, she heard the automatic door locks engage, and she stared out the windshield as they drove across Halmtorvet.
What had she called it? A Balkan necktie, brutal payback for those who snitch. She was breathing in such short jerky gasps that her chest was hardly moving.
The car continued down Sønder Boulevard and turned onto Enghavevej, past Enghave Square, and back to Istedgade.
“We didn’t kill him,” the guy sitting next to Camilla said. The driver kept his eyes on the road and seemed to be concentrating fully on his driving. “And we didn’t kill the woman in the courtyard, either, even if that’s what the police think.”
Camilla closed her eyes as he spoke, not wanting to look at him or participate in what was going on around her right now.
The pain stabbed through her shoulder as he shook her.
“Listen!” he shouted.
The driver was still staring straight ahead as Camilla nodded.
“Go to the club,” he ordered, and the driver nodded and drove a little farther down Istedgade before turning onto Saxogade. She could tell they had Eastern European accents, but she couldn’t narrow it down any more than that.
They passed Estlandsgade past Litauens Square and parked at the corner of Letlandsgade and Saxogade. She hurried to get out when the door on her side was opened.
Three steps led down to the front door, where a little sign said that they were entering an Albanian club. The basement space was larger than she had expected. The color of the walls was tired and sad and showed signs of the thick cigarette smoke that hung densely in the space. There were a bunch of tables, each with four or five chairs around it, and there were men sitting at four of the tables, playing cards with either a glass or a mug in front of them. It took Camilla a second to look around and determine that there was not a single woman in the room. Along one wall there was a bar, which appeared to be tended by an elderly man who was changing the filter in a coffee maker.
She was pushed through the room to a door at the back left.
“We’re going in here,” the man in the glasses told the bartender and received a nod back. No one reacted to the way they were holding her. Several of the men didn’t even look up when they came in.
The room in back must have been some kind of combination of an office and a storeroom, she thought. There was an old desk with a calculator and a couple of three-ring binders, and beer and soda crates were stacked along the wall.
“Sit down.”
He gestured toward a worn-out armchair and then walked over and took a seat at the desk. The driver stayed by the door, and for a second Camilla wondered what would happen if she didn’t obey, but asked if she could leave instead. Would they hit her?
She went and sat down.
“We read what you wrote,” he said and nodded at the guy by the door to make it clear that they’d both seen the article.
“That old fool didn’t see shit,” he continued angrily. “And if he did, then he was wrong.”
He took a deep breath and she could tell that he was trying to curb his temper so rage wouldn’t consume him.
“Or someone made him believe that story,” the guy by the door said. That was the first time the driver had said a word.
The man with the steel glasses and the smooth hair nodded.
“There is, of course, a third possibility. That someone paid you.”
He leaned over toward her menacingly.
“Is that it? Did someone pay you to write that crap?”
She shuddered when a little glob of spit hit her cheek.
“No one paid me or asked me to write anything they didn’t think was true,” she said, deciding not to wipe her face, continuing to look him in the eye as she spoke.
He folded his hands behind his neck and tipped his head back. He sat like that for a bit, looking at the ceiling, before he dropped his hands again and looked at her.
“We didn’t do it,” he repeated. “But someone really wants the police to think we were behind it.”
Now his tone was more subdued.
The man by the door was doing something with his phone, like he wasn’t really involved with whatever was going on with Camilla.
“It’s true that we were on Skelbækgade that night. I was also in the courtyard. But she was already lying on the ground when I got there with the blood pouring out of her.”
He glanced over at the door before he continued.
“I actually knew the girl, so I ran out to the car. Hamdi …,” he nodded toward the door again, and the guy reacted when his name was mentioned, but then looked away again quickly, “and I drove down to Halmtorvet to look for the person who had done it, but the police came quickly, so we pulled back.”
Camilla gathered up her courage before she interrupted him, her voice steady and clear.
“Why am I getting mixed up in all this? I don’t want anything to do with this,” she said, ma
intaining eye contact. She saw his rage return.
“I want you to go to the police and tell them it wasn’t us. They need to lay off our asses and start looking at the people who did it. You got it?”
His eyes were hard, and they bore into her as he spoke.
Camilla took a deep breath and nodded. Even here, with her ability to think rationally paralyzed by fear, she knew her only option was to humor them. The fact that they wanted her to go to the police meant that at least they weren’t planning to kill her.
“The police listen to you, and you’re going to tell them to leave us alone and go after the right killer.”
“I knew Kaj. Not that well, but I knew him, and I know what happened to him in that courtyard.”
Camilla was interrupted by Hamdi, who came over from the door to stand next to the desk.
“We weren’t in that courtyard and we didn’t touch him. Why don’t you ask the police if they know why Ilana wasn’t on the flight from Prague that day we went to the airport to get her? We know they were there too, and if they haven’t already talked to their Czech counterparts, then I suggest that they do.”
The guy with the glasses nodded.
“Then they’ll find out that she couldn’t have taken that flight because she was found that same day in the apartment where she rented a room, her throat slit. They can also ask what the police have on that Serb we heard was seen in the building in Prague the day Ilana was murdered, because he was also in Copenhagen when the two murders took place.”
“If he was seen, then I’m sure the police are already searching for him,” Camilla said, watching him.
“No point in searching for him,” he said, a smile rippling across his lips. “He’s not the type who gets caught.”
Again she had that feeling in her throat. She didn’t know how long she’d been in this back room, but she had no desire to know all the stuff she’d just been told. Mostly she wanted to go home to bed, so she could pull the covers up over her head and shut everything out.