Only One Life

by Sara Blaedel

  After pressing the doorbell a second time, she went back down again and went over to the other side of the building, but everything upstairs was off and dark, Louise noted. So she returned to the car.

  The drive back to the police station took ten minutes, and they agreed that Mik would check the car’s registration in the motor-vehicle registry when they arrived to find out whether the Peugeot was registered at that address. Again Louise had a feeling he was eager to get the job done so he could go home.

  “Not much new information. No one was home,” she reported to the others sitting in the command center. “But what we do know about this girl fits the description we have. Samra al-Abd is from Jordan. She has long hair, and her clothes also match the description pretty well.”

  “We need to find someone who can come to the Pathology Lab and identify her,” Skipper said, filling his mug with coffee.

  “With her parents’ permission we could take Dicta in to do that,” Søren suggested. “We have to be sure it’s someone who knows the deceased well.”

  “She’s too young,” Bengtsen interrupted. “We should use Dicta only as our very last option. It’s too hard for such a young girl to be confronted with a corpse, even if it turns out not to be her friend.”

  It surprised Louise to hear him make that objection.

  “What about her homeroom teacher?” she suggested. “She would know her student well enough that we can trust what she says.”

  Storm nodded and asked her to get in touch with the teacher so they could get the identification done that night.

  “The press has started pushing for more details. But I’ll take care of them,” he continued.

  That sounded good to everyone, because it wouldn’t be much help if everyone was taking calls and they didn’t have a chance to coordinate the information before it leaked out.

  Louise got up and left the meeting to call Dicta and get the name and number for their ninth-grade homeroom teacher. Mik stayed in the office to check the red car in the motor-vehicle registry and had an answer ready when she came back.

  “It’s good enough: it belongs to Ibrahim al-Abd,” he said, pronouncing the name slowly and trying to put the stress on the right syllables. “The address also matches,” he added. “And there was a cell phone number registered for the same name, but the phone seems to be off.”

  “We should be prepared for things to go late tonight,” Louise said. She told him about the impending identification before dialing Dicta’s number and waiting for the girl to answer. Mik and Louise had family living in the area around Holbæk, so the task had fallen to them. To her surprise he nodded absentmindedly and stood up, pulling on his jacket.

  “Well, then I’ve got to run a quick errand.”

  Then he left the office without another word.

  “Jette Petersen,” Dicta said when Louise had gotten her on the line and asked for her teacher’s name. In the same breath Dicta asked if it was Samra who had been killed.

  The anxiety in this question was palpable to Louise even over the phone.

  “We don’t know yet. But we are certainly taking your concern seriously,” she said to dampen the girl’s fears. Then she asked if there were any friends Samra might be staying with. “Does she have a boyfriend?” she asked more specifically.

  “No,” Dicta said quickly. “She’s not allowed to have a boyfriend or anything like that, and she doesn’t usually get permission to go out that much. Sometimes she bends the rules, but that’s mostly when she’s supposed to be coming over to my house and her father won’t let her.”

  Louise wrote this down. If it proved relevant, Louise wanted to hear more about how Samra managed to sneak out and be with her friends, but she would not probe into that right now. As they were talking, Dicta found their homeroom teacher’s phone number, and she gave Louise both her home number and her cell.

  “Thank you so much, and I apologize again for bothering you,” Louise said before hanging up. Louise could hear Dicta’s voice choking up as they said good-bye and knew perfectly well that calling her had only added to the girl’s worry.

  She dialed Jette Petersen’s home number, glancing at her watch. It was nearly half past nine, a bit late to be calling people; but the way things were, they couldn’t wait until the next day.

  “This is Helge,” a man’s voice said.

  Louise introduced herself and asked to speak to his wife. She didn’t think it was necessary to fill him in on the reason for her call.

  There was a moment’s silence, then the homeroom teacher got on the line. “Yes?” she said, a little coldly.

  Louise introduced herself again and apologized for the late call.

  “I’m calling because I’d like to talk to you about one of your students.”

  “Has something happened?” Jette asked anxiously.

  Louise heard a chair being dragged over the floor. Based on her voice, Louise guessed the woman was middle-aged, but it was hard to say—she could also be younger and just a little tired.

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Louise answered. “And I need your help.”

  “Who are you talking about?” the teacher asked quickly, and Louise could tell she was holding her breath, waiting for the answer. Likely not because hearing one name would be any less bad than hearing another, but because the teacher was nervous about what was coming.

  “This is about Samra al-Abd,” Louise said.

  “What’s happened?”

  Anxiety seized the teacher’s voice, making it shriller.

  Louise told her that the police had received a visit from Dicta Møller, who linked Samra with the girl who had been found dead early that morning.

  “Oh, I heard about that. But it didn’t occur to me it might be one of my kids!”

  “It’s certainly far from sure,” Louise hastened to say. “But there are some similarities, which means we have to look into whether it could be Samra or not. How long have you had Samra in your class?”

  “Ever since she moved to Denmark four years ago. She started fifth grade just after the summer break.”

  “We haven’t been able to get hold of Samra or her family, and despite the late hour that’s why I wanted to ask if there was any way you could accompany me to the Pathology Lab in Copenhagen tonight and tell us if the deceased girl is your student.”

  “Of course.” Her voice grew slightly hoarse, and she was breathing deeply. “I can be ready in ten minutes.”

  “That’s very good news. We’ll come pick you up,” Louise said, silently cursing that her partner had just taken off. They could have the girl identified before midnight if they got going now.

  She went out and found Storm, telling him she was ready to drive to Copenhagen with Samra’s teacher.

  “If you leave now, I’ll get Bengtsen and Velin to see if they can track down any family members who might know where the parents are.”

  Skipper and Dean were sitting with Ruth, reviewing the technical evidence that had come in during the day so it could be entered into the database. They had turned up some tire tracks, which might be of interest, and the technical investigation would continue the next day.

  “Well, I’ll be on my way,” Louise said, but at that moment she saw her partner walking toward her again, ready to go. She couldn’t help thinking it was some kind of retribution that he’d ended up having to make this late trip into Copenhagen even though he was obviously itching to get home.

  7

  DICTA AND SAMRA’S HOMEROOM TEACHER LIVED IN A YELLOW house on the outskirts of Holbæk. Forty-five years old, Louise guessed, plus or minus. She was an attractive woman with her short, dark hair tucked behind her ears, her glasses pushed up on top of her head, and her lipstick a subdued hue. Her voice made it clear that she was not quite as composed as she seemed, and she was clenching her hands tightly together in her lap.

  They didn’t say much in the car. Mik assumed the role of chauffeur and hadn’t uttered a word since they left the
police station. He drove with a local’s familiarity through the residential neighborhoods named after various flowers, and he nodded subtly when Louise volunteered to walk up to the teacher’s door by herself.

  Now Louise sat leaning her head against the window on their way to Copenhagen for the second time that day. Jette Petersen obviously had her mind on her student, who might be the victim in this case.

  Before they left Holbæk police headquarters, Louise phoned the on-call Pathology Lab technician in Copenhagen, asking to have the body brought out so it would be ready for viewing when they arrived.

  “Is it normal for Samra to miss a day of school?” Louise said, breaking the silence as she turned around in her seat to look at Jette.

  She quickly repeated that they still weren’t at all sure that the victim was her student, but this was the only relevant tip they had gotten on the missing-person report. And obviously the fact that they weren’t able to get in touch with the girl or her family was a contributing factor in their suspicion.

  “Yes, she misses a day every now and then. Most of the students in this class do. But she hasn’t had any major absences. In fact, it’s fairly uncommon for her not to show up,” the teacher said after thinking a bit.

  “What’s her family like?”

  “I don’t know much about them,” Jette replied, saying that Samra had an elder brother, Hamid, but she knew him only by sight. He was a few years older than she was and had attended the school for only a year before moving on to the business school. “She’s a very pretty girl, and I’ve gotten the impression several times that the parents had the son keep an eye on her. He was often standing around waiting for her when school got out, and then would accompany her home. Occasionally she would run into trouble if she stayed late after school or if we had a special-topic week and were working on class projects into the early evening. The last time we did that, Samra asked me to call her parents at home to confirm it was true she would be staying at school that late. So I guess you could say they keep a pretty close eye on her, but she never complains about it. I probably couldn’t put up with it myself, though,” Jette said quietly.

  “What’s your impression of her parents?”

  “I’ve met them only a few times. Her father showed up just once for a parent-teacher conference, but otherwise I haven’t seen him. But last winter we did ‘Food Week.’ We have several immigrant kids in class, so we spent a week focusing on different food cultures, and we invited all the students’ parents for an evening in the home ec classroom and had the parents prepare a special dish together with their children. It was really great—homey and pleasant and fun—and we ended up with a huge buffet of Danish and international dishes from all over the world. Samra’s mother, Sada, is a lovely, sweet woman. That night we laughed a lot and ate a lot, and I don’t think I might otherwise have had the opportunity to talk as openly and freely with the mothers had it not been in a format where they were serving their food to us. Everyone’s dishes came with lots of funny stories. Sada had her two littlest ones with her as well, Aida and Jamal, and Samra’s sister was a big hit strolling around the room in her little white apron, holding her mother’s fancy serving dish in those little hands of hers and asking, ‘Would you like any more, ma’am? Sir?’” Jette smiled at the memory.

  “Does Samra have relatives in the area?” Louise asked. “Or farther away, for that matter, that her family might be off visiting?”

  “They do have some family here in town. I’m not sure whether they’re on her mother’s or father’s side, but Samra does have a cousin. She’s in the other ninth-grade homeroom, and I have her for math,” Jette said. “Also, I think there’s an uncle who lives somewhere around Ringsted, or somewhere between Holbæk and Copenhagen, I’m not exactly sure. But during vacation last summer I ran into Samra at a flea market in Ringsted, and I think she said she was visiting family. My sister lives just outside Ringsted,” Jette said by way of explanation.

  “Do you know what her uncle’s name is?”

  The teacher shook her head.

  Louise knew that Bengtsen and Søren were already starting to look into locating other people with Samra’s last name, and she thought there was a decent chance the families had the same last name. Louise wondered if she should ask any more about the girl but decided to wait until she knew whether it was actually Samra al-Abd whose body was lying out waiting to be ID’d.

  A man was waiting to let them into the Teilum Building, which was otherwise dark at this late hour, and he led them through the waiting room to the left of the main entrance and then around a corner where he opened the door to a smaller waiting room. He asked them to take a seat on the blue sofas and wait for a moment. There was a box of Kleenex on the table, and the blinds were rolled down over the window into the viewing room, where Louise knew that the girl was already lying.

  The technician opened the door to the room, and he asked Jette to come in. Louise stood up and walked over to the door. He had pulled the white cloth down to reveal the girl’s face, and her hair was neatly arranged over her narrow shoulders. She had no wounds or bruises. She looked the way you often hear: like she was asleep.

  It was over after the first glance. Jette nodded and confirmed that the dead girl was fifteen-year-old Samra al-Abd, who was a student in her ninth-grade class. Louise nodded at Mik, who stepped out to make the phone call so they could start focusing the investigation.

  The teacher placed her hand on her student’s cheek and let it rest there for a moment as she looked at Samra’s face with her eyes shut. Jette’s eyes were tearing up as she turned, and Louise left her in peace as the tears started flowing freely.

  When Mik came back in, to Louise’s great surprise, he stepped over to put his arm around Jette’s shoulders and stood there for a moment comforting her. Louise couldn’t hear what he said, but she noted that the teacher stopped crying, and shortly after she heard him ask if Jette was ready to go back to Holbæk. She saw the small nod, and they slowly began to walk toward the exit. Louise stayed back a bit as Mik helped the teacher into the car.

  They drove back in silence. There were suddenly a number of important questions to ask, but Louise didn’t feel it was the right time to ask them. It was late, and Jette was sitting with her eyes closed, taking deep breaths as though she were struggling to regain control over the emotions that had suddenly sprung a leak within her. Her willingness to come had been an enormous help to them. Louise received a text message from Søren, who wrote that the family in Ringsted had been located, but they were going to postpone getting in touch with them until morning, hoping that would allow them to inform the parents first.

  Before dropping Jette off, Louise asked her not to mention anything at school. They wanted to make sure that the family had been told before they heard the rumors in town. They agreed to meet the next morning when the teacher had a free period in her schedule so they could talk about Samra.

  “Good night, and thank you so much for being willing to do this so late in the evening and on such short notice,” Louise said.

  Mik got out of the car and shook the teacher’s hand good-bye.

  “Do you know her?” Louise asked as he pulled away from the curb.

  “I know who she is, and she knows who I am, but I don’t know her any more closely than that. But it’s never nice to take a blow like that while other people are looking on, let alone people who know you.”

  Louise just sat and watched him, surprised by the thoughtfulness that had shone through Mik’s reserve and awkwardness.

  “I’m heading home if that’s okay with you,” he said when they arrived back at the police station. After they dropped Jette off, they had stopped at Dysseparken 16B to inform the girl’s parents, but there was still no answer at the door.

  Louise nodded at her new partner and said good night before heading up to see whether the others were still at their desks. The lights were off in most of the offices, but Ruth Lange was sitting at her desk working. Ruth told
her that everyone had just taken off and they would regroup again at eight.

  Louise sat down in her office and found to her satisfaction that the IT guy had managed to set up her two laptops, so she would be ready for the next morning. She took out her personal cell phone and saw the long list of messages from Camilla, who asked her to call. But now it was too late.

  She turned it off and flipped it shut, and then started walking over to the hotel with an extra key that had been dropped off for her that opened the main door to the hotel when the front desk was closed. She suspected there wouldn’t be anyone at the front desk this late, but she still went over to see if she could get anything to drink and take up to her room.

  Søren Velin was sitting in one of the roomy armchairs in the lobby waiting for her. With two beers.

  “Hey,” he said, asking if she wanted one.

  She nodded and sat down. There was a pack of cigarettes on the table, but she quickly looked away. She had relapsed and started smoking again over the summer but had decided to quit again.

  “How’s it going?” he asked, holding out a beer to her.

  “All right,” she replied. “We got the girl ID’d.”

  He nodded and said he actually meant how Louise herself was doing.

  Louise smiled and said that she was all right too.

  “What about your partner? Is he okay?” he asked, and Louise took care not to say too much because she knew she couldn’t afford to complain.

  “I haven’t really figured him out yet,” she said. “It’s like we’re not communicating on the same frequency.”

  “Well, everything is still pretty new. Are you still happy about being in Unit A back in Copenhagen?” he asked, shifting the subject away from the local situation.