by Sara Blaedel
On her way home, she pulled off at the Irma on Gammel Kongevej and went inside for baking potatoes and veal cutlets.
* * *
No one was home when Louise let herself into the apartment on the fourth floor, but in the entryway, there was an opened roll of dog-waste bags. The signals were clear: Jonas wanted that dog. It looked as though he’d gone shopping on his way home from school. In his room, there was a newly purchased dog bed and next to it two bowls for food and water. Everything was there except dog and boy.
On the other hand, there was a sea of messages from Camilla on the answering machine connected to her landline, and she noticed that her cell phone had also been bombarded. She’d put it on silent mode while she walked along the harbor gathering her thoughts, and then she’d forgotten to take it off.
“Skype?” she wrote in a text to Camilla and went in and turned on the computer in her bedroom.
Five minutes later, there appeared a blurry image of her friend, shouting the way you do when a telephone connection is bad and several words get drowned out before they reach their recipient.
“Why the hell haven’t you called? Haven’t you seen my messages?” Camilla asked on the computer screen.
Louise could see that she’d taken the laptop with her to a corner of the hotel room, where evidently, the wireless connection was better.
“I just got in the door. What’s happened that’s so important?”
“Earlier today I was out and interviewed Frederik Sachs-Smith,” said Camilla. “He said he’d had a visit from Ulrik and his wife.”
“Hmm…,” Louise said absently and didn’t immediately catch what was alarming about the information.
“But Britt’s never been to the U.S., and the person Ulrik introduced as his wife in Santa Barbara didn’t look like Britt, either. She was blond and buxom. You need to find out who the hell he travels around with and refers to as his wife.”
She said that she’d pumped Frederik for more information, once he’d become more talkative, and apparently Ulrik and the blonde spoke about everyday things, experiences, and travels in a way that made their host believe they were married.
“It must be someone he knows pretty well, to be able to convince people they’re married. At any rate, it’s not Britt because she doesn’t fly and besides that she was with me at the summer house when Ulrik was away. But it doesn’t fit with the picture I have of him, at all.”
“No,” Louise conceded and shook her head at Camilla’s face on the screen.
Her friend sighed and brushed her blond hair back. She looked tanned and healthy, had on a white shirt open at the neck.
“Have you thought that it might be his secretary or a business connection?” asked Louise. At the moment, she was more preoccupied by the talk she and Jonas would be having when he came home.
“No, that’s what you need to find out. But if he’s got something or other going on the side, then he might think it’s awfully convenient for his boring wife to be shoved out of the way in the slammer.”
“Take it easy,” Louise said.
She could see that Camilla had sat down on the floor with her back against the hotel’s striped wallpaper. The picture quality was fine now. She could even see the tears in the corner of her friend’s eye before they spilled over the edge.
“I just know that Britt didn’t set fire to that boathouse,” said Camilla, suddenly looking tired.
Louise was going to interrupt. They’d been through this before, and she’d begun to be irritated with Camilla’s insistence, especially considering that she was on the other side of the planet. She hadn’t even been anywhere near Britt since she lost her daughter.
“What is it you want us to dig up? The name of Ulrik’s lover, so you have something to hit him over the head with?” she asked, a bit more condescending than necessary.
“No, that’s not it,” Camilla answered, cross. “But if he’s living some kind of a double life, then there could be other things and other motives you’re not getting served up on a silver platter. It’s the same with Britt. You’ve been staring yourselves blind. What I’m trying to say is just that there could easily be others with a motive. What about the boys who stayed down there? What do you know about them?”
“What do they have to do with whoever Ulrik travels around the world with?”
“Nothing, probably, but I’m just saying there’s lots of things you haven’t considered at all. You didn’t know, for instance, that he had someone besides his wife.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“And you wouldn’t have found out about it, either, if I hadn’t told you.”
“No,” Louise confessed and nodded when Camilla said that that was precisely what wasn’t good enough if Britt sat in Vestre Prison. “You have to find out every damned thing. Otherwise she’ll end up being sentenced.”
“I don’t really have time for this sort of thing,” Louise began.
“Now hold on,” said Camilla. “Won’t you please go through everything? For my sake and for Britt’s. Everything that relates to that boathouse. I could have landed in her situation, and you could have, too. What if we hadn’t done it, and there was no one who believed in our innocence?”
She paused briefly.
“You need to try to prove that Britt didn’t do it. If you don’t find anything that points in another direction, and if she continues to take the blame herself, then that’s that. But at the very least we need to try to help her.”
Camilla took a deep breath and leaned her head back against the wall.
“You also need to understand something,” Louise said calmly. “Even people you believe in and trust are capable of killing. I think anyone can kill another person, if they’re driven far enough, and in Britt’s case the police are in possession of very strong evidence that she was driven all the way to that point.”
“Yes,” said Camilla, nodding. “I’ve thought about that, too, and it’s possible that that may be the case. But if no one thinks she’s innocent, then it’s just stuck there. Then she ends up sitting and waiting in jail until the sentence comes, and every day she’ll sit and know she’s in jail for something she didn’t do. Without having a chance to convince anyone around her about it. That’s what’ll happen if we don’t dig deeper and at the least rule out every imaginable possibility that could point to it not being her.”
“And then when the day comes that you have to confess that it damn well was her all along, you can relax with a good conscience because you did everything you could to help her. Is that what you’re saying?” asked Louise.
“Yes, that’s pretty much it,” Camilla admitted. “But we have a long way to go before we can relax.”
Louise heard a key in the door and paws jumping up.
“Hi!” she heard from the door as Jonas came in with the puppy in his arms.
“Hi!” Louise said, smiling, and asked if he’d like to Skype a little with Camilla and Markus.
“I’ll have a chat with Ulrik, and I’ll drive by Vestre tomorrow and talk with Britt,” Louise promised.
“Just call. We’ll be here a few days before we head out. Frederik has invited us to stay in his annex. After that we’re flying to Hawaii, where someone’s letting us borrow a house right on the beach.”
“Would that someone also be Frederik Sachs-Smith?” Louise asked.
“Yes, he’s awfully generous. Don’t you remember him? He went to Roskilde Cathedral School just like us, but he left the year we started. His siblings went down to Herlufsholm. It seems a standard high school education wasn’t good enough for them.”
Louise heard something softer and lighter in her friend’s voice when she spoke about her celebrated host, something that hinted at Camilla cozying up to the rich and famous. Louise didn’t know exactly what she thought of it, but considering the state her friend had been in before the trip, anything that brought more lightness and happiness into her voice was more than welcome.
“All right, the
n, have a nice trip,” she said.
Louise had long ago given up interfering in her friend’s private life.
“Here come two who want to say hello,” she said, scooting over for Jonas.
He lifted Dina affectionately to the web camera and smiled when Camilla and Markus completely melted over what a sweet dog she was.
Louise turned on the oven. She rinsed the roasting potatoes and rubbed them in oil, then laid them in an ovenproof dish with coarse salt on the bottom. After that, she opened a bottle of red wine, poured herself a glass, and called out to Station Bellahøj to get hold of Kent’s cell number.
“That computer you seized out at the boathouse, is it with you or has it been sent to NITEC?” she asked when she got him on the line.
“It’s in with them, but we didn’t ask them to find out what’s on it,” he apologized. “The boys were let go again, and it’ll be a long time before their case comes up.”
“That’s true. I’ll call down there myself and find out if they’ve even done anything with it,” she said.
He asked if there were something new, since she’d become interested in it.
“No,” Louise answered. “It just needs to be entered into the investigation. Right now, I’m trying to collect the threads.”
She didn’t think there was any reason to tell him that she wanted to investigate whether there’d been any correspondence between the boys in the boathouse and Signe’s father, or if there might be other relevant information on the computer that showed some other connection between them.
“Hang on while I get you the case number. That’ll make it quicker for them to find it for you,” he said.
46
At the National Police’s IT Crimes Investigation Center, a man answered the phone and hummed in a friendly way as he took down the case number. Then he asked for her local number so they could call when they found the computer and had time to look at it.
“I’m in a bit of a rush,” Louise said, hoping he didn’t feel pushed.
He promised to do what he could.
From the bedroom, Jonas asked if she needed to talk more with Camilla before he closed the session.
“No, I’m finished. Aren’t you coming out here?”
She got a soft drink out of the refrigerator and sat down at the table.
Jonas stood a little hesitantly with Dina in his arms.
“It’s OK if she runs around,” Louise said and nodded to the floor. “Come have a seat.”
He seemed anxious and uncertain and hid his eyes under his bangs. His voice was even more hoarse than usual when he answered, “OK,” and took a glass.
They sat a bit in silence before Louise got started.
“Jonas. It’s not about my just waiting to have you shipped off. The only reason I didn’t offer, from the beginning, for you to live here for as long as you wanted is that I didn’t feel like I was cut out to be anyone’s mother. You do everything right, and I can’t even fall for a puppy—the way most normal people do. I’m alone because I’m afraid of being forced to commit. And that’s just not right.”
Louise nodded to the puppy, which was stretched out on the floor, fast asleep with its head on its paws, the way puppies do. All tuckered out from a walk in the park.
Jonas gave her a sideways glance from under his hair, unsure if what she said was good or bad.
“You’re welcome to have Dina here as much as you like, but I just can’t offer to take care of her if someday you’re tired of doing it yourself.”
“I won’t be,” he muttered, and Louise quickly shook her head.
“I don’t think you will be, either. And so it won’t be a problem, and it doesn’t mean I won’t go for a walk with her or feed her. I just can’t promise you I’ll arrange my life around suddenly having a dog. Every boy wants a dog, and every boy—except you—gets tired of taking care of…”
“What about afterward?” he asked, looking up at her with his dark eyes. “When I can’t stay here anymore?”
“There won’t be any afterward. Not if you want to stay here.”
* * *
The blast was so powerful that the windows in the living room rattled. Louise jumped up and ordered Jonas to stay in the kitchen while she ran into the living room and looked out at the street. She saw smoke and flames, but couldn’t see where they were coming from.
“Stay in here,” she yelled to Jonas.
Dina still lay flat on the floor, exactly as deaf as Mik had feared.
Several people along the stairwell had opened their doors and talked together in alarm.
Something about a car that exploded, and huge flames.
Louise bounded down the stairs, already seeing through the windows that it was her Saab on fire.
She took the half flight of stairs down to the cellar, where the fire extinguisher hung on the wall. She tore it out of its holder.
Melvin came down to her in slippers, pulling on his brown cardigan.
“I called 112,” he said breathlessly.
He looked at Louise.
“What the hell did you have in there that would make something like this happen?” he asked, shaken, and held the door for her as she came up with the heavy fire extinguisher.
Out on the sidewalk, she ripped the safety off the top so the trigger would depress, and white foam came out as though the extinguisher were a giant-size spray bottle.
“I didn’t have anything in there. This is something someone else has done,” she yelled to him and waved him away from the front door. “You’d better go back in. When the fire reaches the tank, it’ll really start smoking.”
The cars were parked tightly on the street, and she wanted to get the flames down before they shifted direction, but she didn’t want to get too close because she couldn’t see how much of the undercarriage was on fire and how close it had come to the tank.
Sirens blared. The fire truck came down from Allégade, taking up the whole road, and the alarm got people opening their windows. For once Louise was happy to be living so close to the Frederiksberg Fire Station. Usually it was just irritating to always hear the sirens go off.
She looked up at her apartment. Four dormer windows facing the street, and Jonas was at one of them. The fire extinguisher brought down the flames, but the fire had gotten to the seats. The firefighters pushed her back when they were ready with the fire hose, which handled the extinguishing work with a violent force. Countless gallons of water spread over the street and coursed away into the gutter.
She hadn’t noticed the police car that joined them, and didn’t know the officer who came over to her.
“Is it yours?”
She nodded. The Saab was completely burned out. What remained was a black skeleton: no windows, no lights. Everything had shattered or been burned away.
Louise felt herself shaking when she gave her name and pointed to the entrance.
“I live up on the fourth.”
“Is Rick with a k or c-h?”
“With c-k,” she answered and looked up to the house, where Jonas was now gone.
“I’d be ready to bet it was blown up,” said one of the young men who’d assisted with the extinguishing. “It would look different if it were just set on fire, although there’s a good deal of that kind of vandalism, too.”
“Yes, but not at six o’clock, right in the middle of when people are eating,” Louise said and shot him an angry look.
He shrugged his shoulders and turned away.
“I work over at Police Headquarters in the Homicide Department,” she explained and gave the officer her cell number.
“I’m afraid he’s right,” he said and nodded to the car. “Is there anyone you’ve riled up or put behind bars?”
He smiled a little, and a moment passed before he reacted to her nod.
“Not put behind bars. But I have a vague idea who the sender might be, if it turns out not to be random vandalism. So, good luck with clearing it up…”
He stood with his p
ad in his hand and flipped to a new page.
“Nick Hartmann,” Louise said, and he was about to write down the name, but stopped when she continued, “was shot.”
Now he nodded, remembering the name.
“He had dealings with the bikers, and we suspect that he tried to cheat them out of an outrageously large amount. Yesterday there were serious threats made against his wife and their little newborn daughter, and we’ve intensified the investigation and are close to establishing a connection between them and the shooting victim. Maybe it isn’t too far-fetched to think that this is a message to me to drop things and leave them in peace.”
Louise gave him the name of her insurance company and said she’d send an accident report sometime in the next few days. The remains of her car, in the meantime, were wrapped in red-and-white police tape and awaited the crime technicians, who’d pick it up for a closer inspection.
“There’s nothing in there you need, is there?” he said with a dry laugh. “When we know how it got started, you’ll hear from us. First and foremost, we need to go around and find out if anyone saw or heard anything. You’d think there’d be a good chance someone did, considering the time of day. So, go on back in. We’ll keep you informed, and please do contact us if anything happens that’s relevant in connection with this.”
She nodded.
“You’re welcome to tell Frandsen this is my car,” she said.
She took a couple of steps back to look over the Saab. The hatch was blown open and looked like a mouth gaping at the street.
She shook her head feeling more sorry than frightened by what had happened. She went over to her building and let herself in the entrance.
On the second floor, she saw Vivian, who had three children and whose husband worked at a bank.
“It’s not so pleasant for the rest of us who live in the building to have something like this happen in the middle of our peaceful neighborhood. That’s one of the reasons we pay extra to live in a decent place…”
Louise didn’t even care to look at her as she walked by.