The Midnight Witness

by Sara Blaedel

  Jørgensen looked up. “Problems?”

  “That was my friend. The woman I was with last night. She just got an enormous bouquet of flowers, no name on the card. I have this feeling it’s from the champagne man.”

  Jørgensen thought for a moment. “You could be right. Good idea to keep a low profile.”

  “Tell her that!”

  Louise tried to concentrate, but she was too rattled. The guard called and informed her that her first interview had arrived.

  Her brain was fried after interviewing the two friends Karoline had been with last Saturday evening. She’d gotten nothing more out of them than what Toft had already written down, but they had to do this; everyone had to be interviewed again. Maybe one of the others would get lucky and something new would come up.

  She drove out to Karoline’s parents. She’d thought it would be a break from work, but it wasn’t easy telling them about Karoline’s pregnancy.

  “I see,” Lise said. She stood up to put water on. Hans sat staring off into space. Neither of them reacted particularly strongly to the news.

  “A grandchild,” Lise said quietly as she set the coffee on the table.

  Louise saw no reason to tell them about the abortion, since their daughter had chosen to keep it to herself. Learning about Karoline’s pregnancy had left them numb as it was.

  Back at the office, Louise had a message from Peter, telling her to call.

  She ached to go home. Things had been a bit tense between them since he proposed she go with him to Aberdeen. But she had one more interview to do, and she knew she wouldn’t be home until eight at the earliest.

  “Hi, hon.”

  She could hear he was driving. Before she could say anything more, he said, “I’m on the way in to buy tickets for a movie tonight, and you’re not going to say you can’t make it.”

  That made her very happy. And very annoyed. “Is this something we talked about doing?”

  He snorted. “No, this is a surprise.”

  “Okay, that’s…bold.” An honest answer, though she tried to sound cheery. “Did you talk to Suhr about letting me off early?”

  Pause. She could hear him turning serious. “No, I didn’t.”

  Louise felt the pressure in her chest again. It showed up during investigations, when leading a normal life proved to be difficult.

  “We need to talk, and I just thought seeing a movie would be a nice way to start out,” Peter said.

  She ran her hand through her hair. “Eight is the earliest I can leave.”

  “I’ll pick up the tickets, and we’ll see what happens.” Peter sounded blue.

  Louise felt the same way. He had ambitions of building an international career, and she respected him greatly for that, but it wounded her deeply that he’d even suggest she give up her job to follow him. Even though it was only for six months.

  Some girls are nice, decent young women, but some are just so incredibly boring, Louise thought as she closed the door after interviewing the last of Karoline’s colleagues. Signe Jensen couldn’t understand at all how Karoline could go into town with her boyfriend sitting at home.

  Maybe that’s why you don’t have a boyfriend, Louise had thought.

  She put on her sweater and walked out in the hall to look for Jørgensen. She didn’t know how the other interviews had gone, but she’d learned nothing new.

  She ran into Toft in the lunchroom. “How did it go?”

  He looked up with a start. “It’s a damn good thing we’re not young anymore. All they think about are parties and women; they can’t tell one night from the next.”

  She guessed that either he’d spent the day with witnesses from Baren, the bar Karoline had been in with her friends, or from Pussy Galore, where Lasse Møller claimed he’d gone after leaving Karoline. She smiled at him and asked if they needed help, because she was finished and could lend them a hand.

  “The last person just showed up. But thanks anyway.”

  He walked down to the kitchen for more coffee.

  Peter met Louise at the door. They had decided to drop the movie. He gave her a big hug, and she noticed the candles and red wine on the table. She hung up her coat and kicked her boots off before hurrying out to the bathroom. She needed some time. She sat on the toilet and peed with her head in her hands. Finally, Peter yelled out, “Did you fall asleep?”

  “I’m coming.”

  She soaped her hands and rinsed them under hot water three times before drying them off. Mostly she wanted to crawl into bed, escape from the demands he was going to make of her. Three years ago, she’d finally gotten the job she’d been working toward for years, and it wasn’t particularly family friendly. But Peter was thirty-eight, his biological clock was ticking faster than hers, and having a family meant more to him.

  She flushed and walked into the living room. She joined him on the sofa, and he put his arm around her and squeezed tightly for a few moments. He leaned forward and poured wine into their glasses.

  “Just half a glass for me,” she said, holding her hand out to stop him.

  He handed her the glass half-full. She always felt a bit awkward toasting with someone in this situation; she was more comfortable at dinner parties, where you could lower your gaze after dutifully looking everyone at the table in the eye, glasses raised.

  Peter smiled at her. “Skaal, hon.”

  “Skaal.” She blushed a bit.

  “I miss you.”

  “I really think you should go to Scotland—”

  “I’m not going if you don’t want to go with me.”

  She felt dizzy; so now she was going to be responsible for his decision? “Come on, there must be cheap airline tickets. We can fly back and forth and see as much of each other as we want.”

  “You know that’s not what this is about. It’s about you and me, our lives together.”

  He was just getting warmed up.

  “This is about making sacrifices for each other. I’d be willing to step back for a while, to put you and your job first—in fact, I feel I’m already doing that. Now I’m the one with the chance to take a step up.”

  Louise caught herself holding her breath.

  “You’re not willing to give anything up for me?” he asked.

  “Of course, of course I am. I just can’t see why you can’t take this big step in your career without me taking a leave of absence. You can do it, we can see each other a few times a month, take vacations together, and in six months you’ll be back.”

  “I don’t see enough of you as it is. I want to wake up with you. Every day.”

  “But that’s what we do already.”

  He stared straight ahead for a moment. “It’s so easy to run away. There aren’t any obligations here. I realized it the other day, when I got annoyed about you not being able to come home. I stayed at my place, didn’t want to see you. And I don’t want it to be that way between us. I don’t want to have that option. We belong together, and I don’t want any escape routes in our relationship.”

  Louise frowned but held her tongue.

  “I need a family, a real one,” he said.

  She felt herself stiffen. Was that what this was about? “I’m not having children now, if that’s what you mean.”

  “I know that.” His finger slid through her hair. “Mainly I want my family to be you.”

  “So, what, are you proposing to me?” She laughed.

  That threw him off for a second, but then he smiled. “I hadn’t been thinking that far ahead, but I’ll gladly put that on the table if you’ll come with me.”

  “No, no,” she quickly replied.

  “What will it take to talk you into it?”

  “I don’t want to be talked into it, and right now I’m just way too tired to talk about it.”

  She walked out. The discussion was over for now.

  13

  Camilla felt guilty, but she enjoyed the weekends Markus spent with his father. After another run-in with Høyer, she’d dro
pped everything when several sportswriters asked if she wanted to go along for a Friday afternoon beer. She hadn’t drunk so much, but it had been past eleven before she left.

  At the front door she reached in her pocket for her key. She hesitated; someone was close behind her. Trying not to tense up, she stuck the key in the lock without looking back. Maybe she was imagining it. She hadn’t heard any steps.

  She pushed the door open and hurried inside. As she started up the steps, before the door closed, someone slipped in. After one more step, she turned around and found herself standing face-to-face with a man in a black leather jacket and black pants.

  “I hear you want to talk to me. Let’s go upstairs.”

  Immediately he grabbed her arm and began pulling her up. She hadn’t at all expected to meet this way. He was hurting her arm, and she didn’t want him in her apartment, but how could she avoid it? “So, you’re the Finn?”

  “We’ll talk about it when we’re inside.” He pushed her forward.

  Her heart was pounding, which puzzled her; she wasn’t scared, not really. What could he do? She tried to hide her shaking hands as she unlocked her apartment door. Thank God her mother was visiting a friend and didn’t have to see this. Inside she noticed how messy everything was, but who cared; she wasn’t out to impress him. He slammed the door.

  “Please, come in,” she said as sweetly as she could. She hoped he’d catch the irony.

  “Thanks.” He pushed her farther down the hall, and she turned in anger.

  “That’s enough of that. You force your way in here, try to frighten me, but don’t fucking push me around in my own apartment. If we’re going to have a talk, you’re going to behave.”

  She studied the man as she unloaded on him. About her age, she estimated, mid-thirties, maybe a bit older. Blond hair, blue eyes, good-looking. She took special note of the friendly look in his eyes, which didn’t jibe with his behavior. A rush of adrenaline hit her; she had to keep control of the situation. “Now that you’re here, would you like a beer?”

  He nodded, and she walked into the kitchen. While grabbing two glasses, she wondered how smart it was to be alone with him. But if he insisted on meeting this way, that’s how it had to be. She still didn’t feel frightened.

  “I want to talk to you about the murder of Frank Sørensen.”

  He was surprised. “First, I figured you were one of my sister’s friends, then I found out you’re a reporter. Made me curious.”

  They sat for a moment as he drank his beer. “Who knows we’re in contact?” he asked.

  “No one.”

  She hoped his question meant he was going to talk to her.

  He poured more beer into his glass. “What’s happened to Søren Holm? I thought he’d be digging around in this.”

  “He is, definitely. We didn’t see him for several days, then he showed up out of the blue this afternoon. He spent the last two days talking with everybody who might have heard something. He’d also been down around Næstved,” she added, to prove he was serious about his search.

  “Ha. He must be shaking every tree, if he’s trying to get something out of the Billing brothers.” He nodded. “Did he find anything out?”

  He stared—bored—into Camilla’s eyes.

  “I don’t know.” She looked down, broke off his stare. “I had a few problems with my boss today, and I didn’t really pay attention. But when I left he was writing like crazy.”

  That seemed to amuse the Finn. He leaned back and smiled. “What do you want to know?”

  The adrenaline started pumping again. “Do you know who did it?”

  That made him laugh. “Hell no. And you think you’d be the first one I’d tell if I did?”

  She shook her head. Maybe not.

  “What do you know?”

  “Nothing.”

  She held her arms out, palms up, thinking she might as well be honest. “I don’t know much about the drug underworld. But I get the impression people are linking Sørensen’s murder to something he was writing.”

  “That’s probably not far off, thinking it has something to do with his articles.”

  “Articles about the drug case, you mean.”

  He nodded. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but he sure never held back. When he dug some dirt up, he wrote about it.”

  That was the Frank Sørensen she knew, too. “But did he write something that might make someone want to kill him?”

  Camilla had read most of Sørensen’s articles about the drug case, and nothing seemed particularly revealing. Mostly they covered police raids, and there was straight-up reporting, too. Several times at work he’d mentioned who he thought was involved, and who he thought was behind it all. But he’d never named them in the articles, and anyway, everyone had the same idea of who the criminals probably were.

  “Let me put it this way. A lot of people in the drug world didn’t like him, and…” He paused for a moment. “They say he sometimes threatened to publish certain stories if people didn’t talk to him.”

  Camilla thought that sounded plausible. “Is anyone talking about who might be behind it?”

  He nodded thoughtfully. “The police are. That’s probably why they arrested someone this evening.” He let that hang in the air.

  Camilla frowned. “What?”

  He drank the rest of his beer and carefully set his glass on the table.

  She tried again. “Who’d they arrest?”

  “You ought to know, he’s a friend of yours.” He smiled wryly.

  At first, she was puzzled, then it hit her who he meant. “Okay. Do you think it’s him?”

  After a moment, he said, “That’s what they say. The cops have been trying to pin this on Klaus West a long time. But they don’t have enough on him. They know a bunch of stuff, but they can’t prove anything.”

  She was a bit confused. “Weren’t we talking about murder?”

  “Yeah, and it’s also in connection with Frank Sørensen that he’s been arrested.”

  “What are they charging him with?”

  “Murder, I suppose. That’s all I know,” he added, to block off her avalanche of questions.

  Camilla relaxed when she realized she was holding her breath. Had she been sitting here sucking up to this guy for no reason? “Why the hell didn’t you say at the start he’d been arrested?”

  He smiled. “Because I thought you wanted to talk to me.”

  She stood up and began pacing the floor. “Do you really think he did it?”

  In her mind she saw Klaus West’s face, toasting with the long-stemmed flutes. Had she been flirting with him four days after he’d murdered Frank? She felt nauseated.

  “You can’t put it past him,” the Finn said. “Everything in Copenhagen that has to do with drugs, you can trace back to him some way or other—at least for now.” He paused a moment. “If Sørensen had something on West and his people, that might let someone else get their foot in the door, West is pretty damn likely to put a stop to it. He’s done it before.”

  Camilla sat back down. She sensed that the Finn was happy to see West gone for a while. But where did he stand in all this?

  She lowered her head into her hands. Odd, she felt relieved and yet still uneasy. Should she call Høyer? But it was past midnight, and anyway, he might already have heard about the arrest. She decided to call the graveyard shift at the paper when the Finn left. “Is the news out?”

  “I doubt the cops are going to hold anything back that shows the world how effective they are,” he said, his voice full of scorn.

  She stood up to follow him out.

  He gazed at her for a few moments. “Don’t go around asking for me. My buddy stepped in because he saw who you girls were with; he wanted to know who you were. And like I said, he thought you knew my sister. There’s lots of stuff going on right now. People are nervous. They notice when a new reporter snoops around asking about me, and I’m not so crazy about that.”

  New reporte
r! Camilla wasn’t so crazy about that, either. “Got it.”

  After showing him out and listening to his footsteps fade, she walked back into the living room and called the paper. While the phone rang, she considered what to say if they hadn’t heard about the arrest yet. How could she explain suddenly finding out about it at half past midnight? She hung up. If they didn’t know now, they’d know tomorrow.

  14

  Louise and Peter slept late Saturday morning. Karoline’s funeral was at two o’clock, so they had plenty of time to go out for brunch and shop before she left. They had an unspoken agreement to give Aberdeen a rest for the time being.

  After sitting down and ordering coffee, Peter headed for the bathroom. Louise noticed the Saturday edition of Morgenavisen in a nearby rack. A large photo of Karoline dominated the front page, along with a slightly smaller photo of a young man with longish hair. The caption stood in boldface print: Younger brother also killed. Her knees felt weak when she walked over and grabbed the paper. She didn’t need to see the byline to know who had written the article. When Peter returned, she was reading intently, her face drained of color.

  “Hon, what’s happened?”

  “She’s gone too fucking far this time.” Her chest tightened; Camilla had written about Karoline’s brother and his traffic accident after all. She leaned back and looked up at Peter. “I’m fed up with her.”

  He sat for a moment before speaking. “It’s her job.”

  She stared at him and shook her head. “I told her this in confidence, and she’s used it. I even told her specifically not to write about it. Everyone’s going to know it came from me.”

  The waiter arrived with a large plate of food, but she’d lost her appetite.

  “Come on, who’s going to figure it out?” Peter said, trying to soothe her.

  “Everyone. The parents, my colleagues, Suhr. They know damn good and well I know her.”

  “They also know she’s a good reporter, and that story was going to come out at some point. Someone would have written it.”