The Midnight Witness

by Sara Blaedel

  Louise wasn’t listening to the conversation around the table. She heard only fragments of stories about Karoline and her little brother when they were small, about family vacations and Christmas evenings, because she was focused on Martin. She wanted to know more about him before they reached the point where he might be added to the list of suspects—a thought that clearly hadn’t occurred to Hans and Lise. Louise sat back in her chair and sighed.

  “Would it be okay with you if we went into Police Headquarters now?” she asked, leaning toward him.

  “Are you going to question me?”

  “We have to talk to you.” She stood up, hoping he would follow.

  “He’s already spoken with someone,” Karoline’s mother said.

  “We just need to know a bit more,” Louise said, trying to make it sound like a mere formality.

  Hans sat hunched over the papers Louise had brought along. He’d been nodding occasionally as he read, and now that he was finished, he signed on the dotted line. An elegant signature, Louise noted. He walked over to Karoline’s boyfriend and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Lucky for you it’s Louise Rick taking care of this. Go along with her before they send someone else.”

  He gestured for Martin to stand up, and they walked out to the hallway. Lise was reading the report, but she stopped and looked up. “All he has is his mother, and she lives over in Frederikshavn. So, we’ve suggested he stay with us as long as he wants.” She caught Louise’s eye to make sure she understood: It was important to them to take care of Martin.

  “Of course,” Louise said.

  Lise skimmed the rest of the report and signed her name beside her husband’s. Then she followed them out and stood in the doorway as they walked to the car.

  4

  Is this something I need a lawyer for?” Martin asked on the way to Police Headquarters.

  “Oh no, you haven’t been charged, it’s really not necessary. I just need to talk to you about Karoline and go through what happened Saturday night.”

  She smiled at him. “It’s completely unofficial for the time being.”

  He turned in his seat and faced her. “For the time being? What do you mean?”

  “Nothing, I was just trying to be funny.”

  He annoyed her. He was twenty-seven, and she didn’t think it should surprise him that he would play an important role in this investigation.

  She parked on Otto Mønsteds Gade. Their footsteps rang out on the stairway. Martin trudged along several steps below her, falling farther behind all the time. She decided to keep things light; hopefully he would loosen up a bit.

  “Would you like some coffee, or something cold?” she asked after they hung their coats up. He looked uncomfortable as he glanced around the office.

  “Water’s fine. We’ve been drinking coffee all day.”

  He stooped a bit as he walked over to the chair at the end of the desk. Louise headed for the kitchen and closed the door behind her. Sitting alone and thinking about what to tell her would do him good.

  The lunchroom was empty. She poured water into a pitcher and grabbed a cup of coffee. On the way back, she stopped out in the hall and listened for voices. Silence. She walked over to Toft and Stig’s office. In the car on the way there, she’d thought it might be smart to look up Stig, since he’d been the first one to talk to Martin Dahl. The door to their office was closed. She laid the pitcher and coffee down on the floor, knocked, and checked the door. Locked—damn!

  Back in her office, she set the pitcher and a glass in front of him. “Here you are.” She sat down at her computer.

  “Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and Karoline?”

  At first it looked like he was going to argue, but then he leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms, and tilted his head an inch or two. “Sure, what do you want to know?”

  Louise took a deep breath. There was an arrogance about him, along with a resistance she couldn’t figure out. Was it that he didn’t want to talk about what happened, or did he just not like cops? She might as well get right to the point. She straightened up in her chair.

  “I want to know everything about you and your girlfriend. She was a sweet, sensible young woman, yet she was found murdered in a park less than twenty-four hours ago, and to put it bluntly, you don’t have an alibi for the time of her murder. And that, my friend, isn’t all that great for you.”

  Louise sighed heavily and sank back in her chair. Now it was out in the open, and the effect on Martin was obvious: He was white as a sheet.

  He stared at her. “I knew it,” he whispered.

  She raised an eyebrow. “You knew what?”

  “I knew I’d get the blame.”

  That riled her up even more. She rolled her chair over to him, not stopping until they were six inches apart. “We’re not talking about blame here. Someone is going down for this murder, and you risk being that person if you keep behaving like this is a matter of some stolen scooter.”

  He straightened up as her words began to sink in. “I’m sorry, I really want to help. But no matter what you find out, I didn’t kill Karoline. I loved her, I dreamed of starting a family with her. The plan was that I’d work less at the shop, and eventually we’d—”

  “How did you meet each other?”

  “In town four years ago; she’d just turned nineteen. I had a small apartment, and she was still living at home. I have a clothing shop on Nørrebrogade; I’d just opened up back then. At first it wasn’t anything serious. She helped a little at the shop on Saturdays, she had the weekends off. She was in nursing school.”

  Louise began taking notes. The sound of her keyboard trailed his words.

  “After six months I knew I wanted her to be the mother of my children. We were always together, either at my place or out at her parents’.”

  “Did you ever take any breaks in the relationship? She was very young; it wouldn’t have been at all strange.”

  “Once.” He bit his lip. “She broke up with me because I got mixed up in something really stupid.”

  Louise sat stone-faced and silent. If she waited long enough, he would come out with it.

  “It wasn’t actually me, it was one of my friends. I helped him out, and Karoline lit into me for getting involved even that much.”

  Louise kept waiting.

  Martin slumped a bit and held his palms up in resignation. “He was an old friend from Frederikshavn. He was dealing a bit out on Østerbro, mostly ecstasy I think, but once in a while he forgot to pay for what he was selling. Things got really hot about a year ago, right after Karoline and I moved in together, so I loaned him the money he owed. That was it.”

  He looked as if he expected Louise to demand more details.

  “Do you take drugs like ecstasy?”

  “I did, but that was a long time ago. Karoline wouldn’t put up with anything that had to do with drugs. That’s why she got so mad at me for even thinking about helping him.”

  “How much did you loan him?”

  “Fifty thousand.”

  “Did he pay you back?”

  He smiled and nodded. “Two months later. I didn’t even need to twist his arm. He’s okay. We were in school together from first grade, and I’ve tried to talk some sense into him, but it doesn’t really seem to sink in.”

  Louise thought about her friendship with Camilla. She would have loaned her fifty thousand, too, if she’d really needed it. She knew from experience that ending a friendship wasn’t easy, when a friend began running around with the wrong crowd, doing things she considered to be wrong. She cleared her throat and looked at Martin. “Did anything like that happen again?”

  He hesitated just long enough for her to notice. “No, just that once.”

  An hour and a half later, Louise felt she had a good picture of Karoline and her relationship with Martin. She knew about their habits, and she’d dug things out of him, like how he partied more than her, how it was hard for him to let go of his bachelor life; he’d stil
l gone into town with the guys sometimes when Karoline had a morning shift the next day and went to bed early.

  Martin had been out with two friends Friday night. One of them sold clothes, the other was the Frederikshavn friend. They hung out at Konrad until four in the morning, and he came home drunk. He and Karoline spent Saturday afternoon with her parents, which hadn’t been easy for him to do.

  “But it went okay, it wasn’t like she was mad at me for coming home late. Occasionally it didn’t go over so well, but she didn’t really notice I wasn’t feeling great. I didn’t work that day, and anyway, she’d been looking forward to meeting her parents in town.”

  He stared off into space.

  She felt for him. The cool and somewhat arrogant attitude had vanished. The person underneath turned out to be a nice guy, a small-town boy living in the city. A smart-ass who wasn’t all that smart, who on the surface loved the big-city life yet dreamed of having a wife and kids outside Copenhagen. A bit out of place, she thought. She reached in her bag, brought out a pack of Kleenex, and pushed it over to him.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  He blew his nose and took a sip of water. “Was she raped?”

  Louise thought for a moment. Maybe she shouldn’t tell him too much before she knew his whereabouts on Saturday evening. On the other hand, it felt odd not to talk about it. If he really was the killer, it wouldn’t be news to him, and anyway, there wasn’t much to say before the forensics report came in.

  “There’s no indication of it. The coroner’s inquest is finished, but the autopsy hasn’t been performed yet, and we can’t be sure until we get the report. Shall we go on?”

  He nodded.

  “You two were with Lise and Hans Wissinge Saturday afternoon until when?”

  “They went home at four thirty. Karoline had a few hours before she was supposed to meet up with her girlfriends. They get together for dinner a few times a year. She doesn’t like going into town that much.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. He’d realized he was speaking in the present tense.

  “She’d really been looking forward to it. They were going to fix dinner together and have fun; sometimes they went out later for drinks, sometimes Karoline just came home.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I crashed on the sofa. I must’ve been really drunk the night before. I didn’t feel like moving a muscle. So, I called out for pizza. I watched a couple of films on DVD.”

  He thought about it for a moment, then he said it had been three films, not two. “I woke up about three and went to bed, slept till about ten. That’s when I realized Karoline hadn’t come home.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I waited for her. I expected her to walk in the door any minute. I called her several times, but her phone was turned off. And I called Trine and Heidi, her two friends she’d had dinner with, but they didn’t answer, either.”

  “Had she ever not come home before?”

  “No, but sometimes things happen…”

  The awkward silence told Louise that he’d probably done just that to Karoline—not come home after a night on the town with the boys. “Did she say she might not be home until the next day?”

  “No, but I assumed she was staying with one of her girlfriends, or…”

  Jesus, Louise thought. She reminded herself how happy she was with Peter. That or didn’t exist in their relationship, thank God. “When did you really start to wonder why she still hadn’t come home?”

  “I called Heidi around three. She couldn’t understand at all what I was talking about; she said Karoline went home before she did. I had to really twist her arm before she admitted that Karoline had left with another guy. And she worked really hard to convince me it wasn’t some guy she’d been with.” He didn’t sound convinced.

  “Weren’t you worried then?”

  Louise was completely focused. At this point, every reaction, every detail had to be noted. Why the hell wouldn’t someone react immediately when their girlfriend didn’t come home? Either it had happened many times before, or else he knew why she hadn’t come home. In her head, Louise ran through all the possibilities and tucked them away. They would sharpen her intuition when she went through his statement later on. What did he react negatively to? Why did he wait so long before contacting the police, when Karoline never stayed out all night? She also made small notes to herself on the notepad beside the computer.

  “Just before eight that evening you called the National Hospital to find out if she’d been admitted. Why did you do that?”

  He looked confused. “Well, she didn’t come home, did she?”

  “No! But why were you suddenly worried? When you weren’t all day, at least not so much?”

  “It was getting late, her parents had called a few times, and I couldn’t just tell them she hadn’t come home.”

  “So you thought she’d gone home with someone else, and that’s why you waited so long before searching for her?”

  Louise held back. It wasn’t her job to judge, but it irked her that he could imagine his girlfriend was cheating on him, when she so obviously wasn’t the type.

  He stared at her as if she’d slapped him. “Yeah, that’s probably why. What the hell was I thinking?” He began sobbing.

  She drove him back to his apartment at six thirty. She told him she wanted to have a look around, but she emphasized that it wasn’t a search. He nodded and said to go ahead.

  The crowded apartment was only forty-five square meters. There were things everywhere she looked. Several cute knickknacks blocked off some of the light from the windows. White bookshelves, a console table, and a buffet were crammed in the living room, along with a large, plush leather sofa and an enormous TV and DVD player.

  Obviously, the TV area was Martin’s realm. It must be what they called a home theater, she thought. And everything that was white was Karoline’s. The techs had been there earlier that day, so she knew she was free to touch things.

  She didn’t have a search warrant, so she didn’t dare look through cupboards and cabinets, but she opened the sliding door of their wardrobe and looked inside. Karoline’s clothes were neatly stacked; much of it was black and gray, classic, nice. She had definitely been organized. Eight ring binders were lined up at the bottom of the wardrobe. Louise glanced around the apartment. No piles, everything in its place. Except for Martin’s clothes and two pizza boxes. The type of stuff that cluttered Louise’s apartment was put away—presumably in the ring binders.

  Several family photographs in old as well as new frames stood on top of the white buffet. Louise recognized the grandparents and the aunt. There were also photos of Martin, and of Karoline’s deceased younger brother. He had longish blond hair and a broad smile.

  Louise shook Martin’s hand when she said goodbye, adding that they’d probably need to talk to him again, that it was normal to be called in several times during this type of investigation.

  He nodded. “I understand.”

  He smiled weakly and handed her a card with numbers for his cell phone and store.

  It bothered her that she didn’t really have him figured out.

  She checked her watch. The seven o’clock briefing was definitely over with. She needed to call Heilmann to hear if anything had come up that she should know about.

  As she walked to the car, she wondered if it was too optimistic to stop by Sticks’n’Sushi for dinner. She decided that food was the top priority, even if she had to take it back to headquarters and eat in the office while the others shamed her for buying only enough for herself.

  Louise patiently waited almost a half hour for her sushi. Back at the car, she called Heilmann. “I’m finished at Karoline’s boyfriend’s apartment. Anything happen while I was gone?”

  “We have some names, some people to bring in for questioning.”

  “Great,” Louise said. She couldn’t work up any enthusiasm, though. Suddenly the tray of sushi
in the paper bag annoyed her.

  “The boss just stopped by. He wants us to do the interrogations this evening. And by the way, he’s certain you’ll come in with something strong enough to charge the boyfriend.”

  “He must be out of his goddamn mind. Why would he think that?”

  “My best guess is he’s emphasizing to everyone that he expects a breakthrough very soon. The journalist’s murder is drawing a lot of attention from the media; he’d like to see everyone concentrating on that.”

  “No problem, let’s just stop investigating the murder of Karoline Wissinge. Now that she’s been dead for over twenty-four hours.”

  The words flew out of her mouth, she couldn’t stop herself, though she tried to make a joke of it. She was so, so fed up with how some murders were more important to solve than others. She’d discussed this with her boss before, but Heilmann had patiently defended the head of Homicide by saying that as long as the public took an interest in what the police did, extra resources had to be allocated to higher-profile murder cases. Other cases had to make do with fewer personnel.

  “Christ!” Louise sighed. She knew the murder of a crime reporter was more interesting than that of a twenty-three-year-old nurse. If Karoline had been a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, Suhr would probably have given her priority.

  Heilmann broke into her thoughts. “Did you get anything out of Martin Dahl?”

  “Not really. He still claims he was in his apartment during the time frame of her murder. And he says that he wanted to marry her and have children, that he loved her more than anything. Nothing in particular made me think he was lying, or that they were having problems.”

  She considered whether to mention his odd behavior when his girlfriend hadn’t come home Sunday. But it wasn’t really anything new; she could talk about it in the morning. “Who are we bringing in for questioning this evening?”