Only One Life

by Sara Blaedel

  “What a morning,” he said, sitting down behind his computer.

  Louise didn’t know what to think about the intimacy that suddenly existed between them. It was unavoidable, but she didn’t like it and it could easily get ugly, she thought. All the same, she smiled at him.

  “We have to talk about what happened last night,” she said after looking at him for a minute. Normally she did not do things that were rash and poorly thought out. The last twelve hours, she’d done nothing but.

  He looked at her and smiled. “Didn’t you think it was nice?” he asked in a teasing tone, which immediately made her pinch her eyes shut a little. “We don’t need to make a major deal out of it,” he said, beating her to the punch. “Obviously it wasn’t particularly smart. But now it’s happened, and I had a lovely night.”

  “We share an office!” Louise exclaimed, irritated at his relaxed attitude.

  He nodded. “I still think it was lovely, and I promise I can control myself.”

  Louise couldn’t help but smile. He had just kissed her, but apparently that didn’t count, she thought, shaking her head. “Of course we can control ourselves, but it never should have happened, and I know it’s my fault,” she said emphatically. “But promise me anyway that we’ll keep this just between the two of us.”

  He grinned and Louise hid her head behind her hands, suddenly overwhelmed by the wave of fatigue that she had suppressed while she was with Dicta’s parents. Now it came back full force. The few hours of sleep had made her sensitive to the cold, and her body was weak and tender from the unfamiliar amount of lovemaking it had all of a sudden been subjected to.

  She glanced over at him, not feeling very proud of the situation. And now of all times that she had finally gained her freedom, she thought. Which she had actually been longing for for many years, but just hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about. She sat for a bit lost in her thoughts until she suddenly heard Camilla’s voice in the back of her mind: “Now is the time to hook up with a few lovers. Lovers are so liberating; there’s no pressure of having them around permanently.”

  Louise smiled down at her clasped hands and thought that actually that was what Mik was, a lover. She just wasn’t used to that. What were you supposed to do with them after you made love and you got back to everyday life? Where did you stash them after you were done with them, and how did you get them back out again? Or did you just scrap them all from time to time?

  She pushed her hair back and looked over at him. “I’m tired, but it was nice,” she said, meaning that sincerely. “Still, I wish we’d managed to sleep a little more. Oh, and now to face a day like today.”

  Louise thought about Dicta and pictured the girl.

  “How did it go at her parents’ place?” Mik asked.

  She told him how Anne and Henrik Møller had reacted and that they really wanted to see their daughter if possible.

  “The message from Pathology was that they were going to do the autopsy this afternoon, and we’re supposed to be there.”

  Louise couldn’t bear to think about the autopsy or the new investigation that was just starting up. Instead, she stood up to go get more coffee. She asked if he wanted any.

  “I’ll come with you and find out if there’s anything new. We’ve gotten in touch with a bunch of people who work close to the parking lot, but I think we’d better take a drive out and see that friend Dicta was supposed to spend the night with,” Mik said.

  Storm and Bengtsen were sitting with Ruth in the command room with steaming coffees in front of them when Louise and Mik walked in with their empty mugs.

  “We just got her cell phone back from the tech guys,” Storm said, once they’d sat down. He pushed the phone across the table and asked Louise and Mik to read the last set of text messages in Dicta’s inbox.

  Louise pulled her chair close to Mik’s and they both leaned over to read.

  “They must have been sent while she was with Liv,” Louise commented when she saw the time.

  “We’ll drive over there and talk to the friend before we head into Copenhagen,” Mik added, and received a nod before Storm continued.

  “Velin is working on printing out all the phone info so we can see which antennae it was routed through for the last few days,” he said.

  “This number doesn’t have a name entered, but it belongs to Tue Sunds, the girl’s photographer,” Bengtsen said, but Louise had already figured that out after having read the first of the messages, which said, “Unfortunately, I have to cancel for this evening.”

  Louise reached over and took the phone out of Mik’s hand and scrolled down to the next message, the second that had come from Tue Sunds within a short time window.

  “Yes, of course, you mean something, but not in that way. Please keep yourself away from me.”

  She moved to the next one.

  “No, we can’t meet tomorrow either. I never promised anything. You’re done, history. Quit bugging me.”

  As if she were a child he had brought to a candy store and not a young woman who didn’t understand the harsh rules of reality.

  “Don’t threaten me and quit coming here, otherwise things might get uncomfortable for you.”

  That was the last one, and it had been received a little after ten-thirty.

  Louise didn’t even want to look when Mik switched over to the sent messages. She couldn’t bear to see how Dicta had begged to try to avoid Tue’s rejection.

  What a pig, Louise thought, as she drained her coffee cup and got up to accompany Mik on a visit to Liv, the last person Dicta was known to have seen.

  Louise hardly recognized Liv without the thick black eye makeup and the black clothes. Her hair was still black, but she was wearing totally normal clothes, and there was nothing provocative or rebellious about her as she stood there at the front door and let them in. She’d heard what had happened and had been crying, and she certainly wasn’t done crying yet. They promised her parents they would make it quick and followed the girl into the dining room, which was dominated by a large window with a panoramic view of the yard. They were looking for simple, straightforward answers. What time had Dicta left Liv’s place Saturday night, and what was she planning on doing?

  Liv didn’t even need to think about it when she reported that Dicta hadn’t left until a little after eleven, although she’d said earlier that she would be leaving around eight-thirty because she was supposed to meet up with her photographer. Liv had assumed she meant Michael Mogensen, but she hadn’t asked about it because she was mad that Dicta had used her as an excuse to go out without her parents’ permission.

  Liv said they’d watched a little TV, but that Dicta had seemed distracted and kept looking at her cell phone and sending text messages most of the night; and when she finally left, she seemed more depressed than when she’d arrived.

  They thanked Liv, and Louise said that they might need to come back and talk to her again.

  Liv nodded and stood there watching them go as Mik pulled away from the curb and turned the car onto the suburban street.

  “It’s hardly even worth discussing it with you,” Camilla snapped into her phone so gruffly that people at the other tables in the café looked at her. “You’re so goddamned judgmental, you’ve got me wondering if I can even keep working for your newspaper.”

  She would never have dared talk to her boss this way if he hadn’t stepped on her toes by trashing her articles on Sada. And because he was quite aware that he had exposed a very unseemly side of himself, and she knew he would go to great lengths to cover that up.

  “I completely agree that it’s the same as admitting we were wrong,” she continued. Her voice was back down in its normal range, so the other café guests had returned to their conversations. “But we were wrong, and right now there is no indication that the al-Abd family killed their own daughter in some kind of honor killing. Quite the contrary, it would appear that there’s a murderer on the loose in town.”

  She listened and
patiently took deep breaths while Terkel Høyer spoke.

  “I can’t keep smearing the family in the absence of any new information to point in their direction,” she repeated into her phone. “There must be a reason the police haven’t arrested the Jordanian girl’s father yet.”

  Her editor kept insisting that they had to keep going with the approach they had picked—their angle—so they didn’t suddenly start working against their own stories.

  “Well, now. You were actually the one who skewed the story so hard from the beginning,” Camilla said again when he started blaming her for having stuck to such a hard line in the articles she’d written from Holbæk. She listened for a bit and then sighed tiredly. “If you print the two articles in the paper tomorrow and refrain from linking them to the killing of Dicta, then you will already have changed the tone, so the paper’s stance isn’t so severe.”

  Camilla could picture Terkel. It wouldn’t be that easy for him to do, but he wasn’t so stupid that he couldn’t see she was right.

  “I’m planning to stay in Holbæk for the rest of the day,” she said, “but it might be a good idea to get someone to look into that photographer who took the pictures of Dicta for Ekstra Bladet. I know the police are interested in him,” Camilla said, wrapping up the conversation.

  She didn’t have to pick her son up from soccer until six, so she had plenty of time before she had to drive back to Copenhagen. Markus was playing in a tournament, so he wouldn’t be done until five-thirty. Camilla had tried only once to be there, ready at the doorway when the flock returned home, sweaty and in high spirits in their oversized soccer jerseys with the team logo on the front and their own last names on the back, and her effort had not been well received. First they had to eat a few pieces of crisp bread slathered in Nutella and hold their postgame strategy meeting so they were ready for the next game. She either had to wait while they did that or come back half an hour later.

  She called Louise in the hopes of luring her out for a cup of coffee, although she figured Louise wouldn’t take her up on it now that there had been another murder.

  “A quick one,” Louise said. “I have to go in and observe the autopsy in two hours, and I could definitely use a pick-me-up before that.”

  Surprised that it hadn’t taken more convincing, Camilla switched off her phone and hurried to the café farther down the main street.

  “What the hell’s with your appearance?” she exclaimed when she spotted Louise.

  Louise yawned loudly and nodded as Camilla suggested a latte and some water.

  “Didn’t you get any sleep last night?” Camilla asked, concerned. “What time was Dicta found?”

  Before the coffee had even arrived at the table, Louise was filling Camilla in on her evening and night, the words pouring out of her mouth in one long stream. When the coffee was consumed and Louise was still only in the middle of her story about her visit to her colleague’s farm, Camilla got up to order more coffee.

  “With him, really?” Camilla asked, incredulous. “He’s pretty much as close to the opposite of Peter as you can get, if that’s what you were going for. The man wears Wranglers, for Pete’s sake!”

  “How do you know that?” Louise asked right away.

  “I notice that kind of thing,” Camilla said with a grin. “He also wears police-issue Ecco shoes.”

  “Henning wore sandals,” Louise reminded her.

  Camilla’s eyes sank down to the marble top of the café table, feeling a momentary stab of pain. Yes, he’d been wearing sandals and, worse yet, socks the first time she met him, but she’d fallen for him anyway.

  She looked up and smiled at Louise.

  “Well, are you going to see him again?” Camilla asked.

  “I don’t see any way around it. I see him all the time. There’s actually no way I could avoid seeing him,” Louise said.

  “If it didn’t mean anything other than a bit of fun, well, then it’s already over,” Camilla said, trying to smooth things over. “Was he good to you?”

  Louise smiled and nodded. “He was very good, really sweet, and I can’t remember it ever being like that before. But it felt so strange. That’s the part I’m not crazy about.”

  “Then I suppose you’ll just have to do it again, so it starts to feel more familiar,” Camilla said, trying to sound suggestive enough that her friend would get over her shyness at having flung herself into something she had no control over.

  “No, thanks. I think that was enough,” Louise said. “I’m not sure he thought it was a particularly good idea either, although he may be handling it a bit better.”

  “You mean that maybe you seduced him against his wishes?” Camilla was not opposed to getting a few more details out of her friend.

  “You certainly might say that.” Louise grinned sheepishly, and Camilla smiled at her. In Camilla’s mind it didn’t really matter what Louise needed to do to shake off Peter’s shadow. Which made her think of Henning, which made her stomach hurt. If anyone was stuck on a relationship that was over, it was clearly she, and she just couldn’t see any light at the end of that tunnel.

  They paid and Camilla grew serious again. “What do you have on the new case?” she asked before they parted ways.

  Louise seemed to be considering whether she would answer, but eventually said that they would bring the Copenhagen photographer in for questioning.

  “We don’t have anything, but now we have to see what the autopsy shows,” Louise said, looking at her watch, as if the time were getting away from her. “It appears that there may be something to the rumors you told me about this morning,” she said before stepping out onto the sidewalk and setting her course toward the police station.

  Camilla stood there a minute watching her go, before pulling out her cell phone and calling Terkel Høyer again.

  “You should work the Tue angle, hard. He had something going with the girl,” Camilla said succinctly and then stood there for a second before heading back into the café again and ordering a glass of organic Søbogaard fruit juice, while she tried to get her thoughts in order. She wanted to write a story for the next day’s paper with quotes from several of Dicta’s classmates and a summary of the mood in the town. Then, once her censored articles came out, she would contact Sada again and ask about her reaction to the murder of her daughter’s friend.

  26

  TO LOUISE, AS SHE AND MIK ARRIVED AT THE PATHOLOGY LAB LATE that afternoon, it felt like the day would never end. She’d had her eyes closed most of the way there in the car, thinking that it was just typical that on the one day she didn’t show up to work perky and well rested, of course that would be the day all hell broke loose. But her father had once told her something that now rang profoundly true: If you’re up to partying all night, then you darn well ought to be up to doing your job the next day!

  Åse was already there, and Flemming Larsen was ready as they walked into the autopsy room. It was the same setup as before, aside from the fact that it was now Dicta’s beaten, ill-treated body that was lying on the table waiting to be examined in minute detail by professional eyes and hands. Louise took a couple of deep breaths, and her hand brushed against Mik’s as she walked past him to lean up against the wall as Flemming got prepared. A strip of images from the CT scan of Dicta’s skull was hanging in front of a large light box to the left of the door.

  “Can you tell what happened?” Louise asked, looking at Flemming.

  He walked over and stood next to the light box and pointed up at the first picture.

  “It is evident that she sustained several severe blows to the left side of the head and there are many bone fragments. The advantage to a CT scan, in a case where the injuries are as severe as these, is that we can see the lesions inside the skull. When I open it up a little later, most of her cranium will just fall apart, which can make it hard to tell how the blows impacted,” Flemming explained, turning to start securing Dicta’s bloody clothes. After that, every centimeter of her naked body was
meticulously examined for particles. Åse leaned over several times and dabbed a piece of tape against her bare skin in the hope of removing some evidence, and Flemming used his Q-tips to search for anything that could be used for a DNA analysis. Meanwhile, Louise leaned against the wall, following along, prepared to work all night if that would bring them a step closer to whoever was responsible for this crime.

  “There are fresh abrasions and subdermal hematomas on the chest.” Flemming pointed to the large, dark splotches scattered above and below the girl’s breasts. Then he leaned over and drew the big round operating lamp farther down over Dicta’s body.

  “That looks like maybe a footprint,” he said, making room for Åse, who moved in with her camera. “I think she was kicked after she fell down.”

  Rage, Louise thought, everything she saw in front of her radiated so much rage. It had been unleashed and transformed into raw violence.

  Flemming cautiously allowed his hands to feel all the way around the head injuries before he walked over to the cabinet at the end of the room to retrieve a set of electric hair clippers, which he plugged in and used to start shaving the long blonde hair off the left side of the girl’s head.

  Louise closed her eyes for a second. It was almost unbearable to see Dicta’s pride and vanity being peeled away from her, leaving her bald and naked.

  “Let’s see how the skin looks,” Flemming said as he switched off the clippers, long tufts of light-blonde hair strewn in heaps on the floor. “She was severely beaten,” he said, confirming that the whole left side of her cranium was caved in.

  Åse took her pictures and said it looked like there were more contusions.

  She made room for Flemming, who leaned over Dicta’s head and studied it in detail. Then he straightened up his six-and-a-half-foot-tall body and stood there for a moment before he said, “I’d say we’re dealing with a pattern injury here.”

  “What do you mean?” Louise asked from over by the wall.