by Sara Blaedel
The photographer let his chin fall down against his chest and closed his eyes.
“And when she went home, she said she wasn’t following her heart but that it would be easier for her. But it was all just lies. Because if she really wanted to, she could have just moved in here with me.”
Louise cleared her throat. “Unfortunately, I don’t think it was that easy for her,” she began, picturing the pages from Samra’s diary.
The room was silent. Only the sounds of their breathing made the air vibrate.
Louise thought of Ibrahim and Hamid. It surprised her that neither one of them had distanced himself more vociferously from the crime. That alone had cast suspicion over them. They had denied it and hadn’t wavered on their statements, but they hadn’t seriously defended their innocence. Now that it was clear they weren’t behind the killings, she realized that each of them must have suspected the other after the crime Ahmad had subjected his niece to.
Ibrahim had suspected his brother of the killing, but didn’t want to turn him in until he was sure of what had happened. That was what he’d been trying to figure out when he went to see Ahmad the day after Samra disappeared.
Maybe he was also afraid that Hamid had acted on his own initiative to make his father and uncle happy, if he knew about his sister’s secret.
Ahmad probably suspected Ibrahim of killing his own daughter so she wouldn’t cast shame over the family once the relationship with the Danish man was revealed. That would make sense to Ahmad. Louise also knew from Camilla that for a while, Sada had suspected her husband was behind the murder, although later her suspicion had passed to Ahmad. No one in the al-Abd family had ever really suspected anyone from outside the family of doing it.
“I must now officially inform you that the time is 6:21 P.M. and you are under arrest, charged with the murders of Samra al-Abd and Dicta Møller,” Mik said to Michael Mogensen.
The he asked the photographer to stand up and he started frisking him, before putting a hand on his elbow and leading him out to the patrol car.
41
“LET’S ISSUE A PRESS RELEASE RIGHT AWAY,” STORM SAID when Louise and Mik returned to the police station with Michael Mogensen. The photographer was received by two officers who were ready to process him so Louise and Mik could join the others in the command room.
“It’s important that we let the media know that this case did not involve an honor killing. Maybe that will make whoever’s behind Aida’s disappearance come to their senses,” Dean said.
“We’ll release Ibrahim and his son immediately and tell them what’s happened,” Storm said, looking over at Ruth. “I wonder if we’ll be fined for their arrests. We’re sure to receive a claim for compensation for wrongful imprisonment that’s going to fucking hurt more than just our public image.”
The administrative assistant raised an eyebrow and nodded thoughtfully before agreeing that he was right.
“But there was no other choice, what with the situation the way it was,” Skipper interrupted.
“All the family members seemed to suspect each other and no one was telling us what they knew, so it’s really not that surprising that we suspected them as well,” Louise said, reaching for a bottle of soda before she started telling everyone about Michael’s arrest.
“Late Tuesday evening, after Ahmad had gone home and once her parents were asleep, Samra sneaked out to see her boyfriend. Out of fear that her parents and brother would discover their relationship, Samra hadn’t allowed any phone calls between them. Instead they arranged their future meetings in person when they were together. Michael Mogensen thinks it was about eleven when she came over. He had lit candles and bought her flowers, because he had been planning to ask her to marry him that night, so it took him completely by surprise when she said she had come to tell him that she had arranged with her parents to send her back home to Jordan.”
“Ouch,” mumbled Bengtsen, passing the cookies around again as Louise continued.
“He gave her the thin gold chain she was wearing around her neck when she was found. But he didn’t understand why she didn’t want him, or why she would rather find a husband in Jordan when the time came.”
“Who says that’s what she wanted?” Skipper asked.
“That’s what Michael Mogensen said,” Mik responded and then let Louise continue.
“Michael thinks it’s because Samra wanted the kind of close extended family life she would have had with someone from her own traditional background. After having read her diary, I don’t think the family relationship was the main reason. I mean, just think about what her uncle did to her. It might have been part of the reason, but I think mostly she was looking for an excuse to call it off.”
“To escape from the double life she’d been leading, which was making it hard for her to be a ‘normal’ Danish teenager,” Dean added, and Louise nodded.
“I know that a lot of Muslim girls who suddenly choose to go back to their family’s traditional values do it to achieve some peace of mind,” Louise continued. “The struggle is twice as hard, the struggle that the young immigrant girls have to fight, because by becoming ‘normal Danes’ they know they can expect to end up lonely and isolated, cut off from their families and their closest friends. And that network doesn’t just get replaced by a new one. In that sense, it’s a totally different kind of women’s liberation than what Danish women have been through,” Louise concluded, letting her elbows sit on top of the table as she pensively rested her chin in her hands.
“Poor girl,” Ruth said, staring straight ahead.
Mik cleared his throat. “Michael Mogensen has a boat that he keeps out in Hørby Marina by Cape Tuse,” he said. “Michael says he suffocated Samra with a sofa cushion, then carried her out and put her in the trunk of his car and drove out to his boat.”
“His tripod was in the trunk too, and that’s where the marks on the back of her head came from,” Louise added. She was annoyed that she hadn’t realized the photographer had access to a boat back when she’d seen the pictures of Dicta that had been taken on the deck. She honestly just hadn’t given it a thought, because their suspicions had been focused elsewhere.
“We’ll get it checked out,” Storm said. “And obviously the same goes for his car and his studio. And you’d better remove the wiretap in Dysseparken now that they’re being released,” he added with a look at Velin.
“That also means that those tire impressions we found out at Hønsehalsen are completely irrelevant, right?” Skipper asked, and Dean nodded.
“But how does Dicta’s murder fit into this story?” Ruth asked, looking over at Louise.
“It really doesn’t. It doesn’t sound like Dicta knew anything about the relationship between her best friend and the photographer. Apparently Samra hadn’t told anyone. Dicta was presumably not in the best mood when she left Liv’s place after her humiliating rejection by Tue Sunds, and was pretty much primed to take it out on someone. Michael Mogensen thinks it was a little past midnight when he happened to see her crossing the street in front of the train station. He pulled up alongside her and she said that she had missed her train and he offered to drive her home. After she got in, she started mocking him, and he pulled into the parking lot to let her out. But after she got out, she kept belittling him, and eventually he lost it.”
“You can pin down all the details when you talk to him,” Storm interrupted, then he asked Louise and Mik to start preparing to question the photographer, so they would be ready for the preliminary examination.
An hour later, news of his confession was everywhere. The local TV news team was getting ready to do a live interview with Storm when they went on the air around nine o’clock, and the Dagbladet journalists had already started gathering in the lobby of the police station, waiting for the press conference Storm had called for immediately after his television appearance. Louise was trying to block out all the commotion so she could concentrate on Michael Mogensen’s questioning, which she and Mik w
ere going to begin as soon as the uniforms were done processing the arrest.
The crime-scene specialists had just arrived in town and had started turning the photographer’s apartment upside down. The car and the sailboat at Cape Tuse would be brought in for thorough examinations, but even after just a cursory look at the tripod they had agreed that that was what had been used to crush Dicta’s skull. Both the weight and the size and location of the rounded screw heads fit the lesions with the three-centimeter spacing.
Louise was sitting in her office behind her closed door, reviewing the notes from the first questioning session they’d had when they visited the photographer. So she didn’t answer the phone until the fourth ring, and she was dismissive and snappish with her greeting.
“I just heard,” Henrik Møller said, without paying any attention to her standoffish tone. “I’m at home and just told my wife. I wasn’t sure if she’d heard the news. I need you to come over right away.” He didn’t give her any time to object before he hung up.
Louise felt like she’d been stuffed into a deep, black hole. The last thing she wanted to spend her remaining energy on now was Dicta’s unhappy, unbalanced mother.
She stood and Mik looked up.
“What was that?”
“Henrik Møller. He just told his wife that Samra’s parents are innocent and that the actual murderer has been caught. He wanted me to come over right away.”
“Do you want me to come too?”
She shook her head. “You don’t need to do that. I think he just wants me there to confirm that the case is really closed. It won’t take long.”
Both of the family’s cars were in the driveway when Louise arrived, but there still weren’t any dogs barking as she walked up to the front door. The dogs’ absence left her body with an empty feeling. The doorbell echoed through the house, and a second later the door opened.
Henrik Møller was pale and nodded briefly when she said hello. She reluctantly followed him into the house, and he continued down the hallway toward Dicta’s room. There was an open mover’s box in front of the door, and a few toys were spread out on the carpet.
Henrik stood there in the hallway and pushed open the door to the room. Big piles of little girls’ toys filled the floor. The bed was unmade, but at the head end Louise spotted the dark hair.
42
ANNE MøLLER DIDN’T EVEN LOOK UP WHEN LOUISE WALKED INTO the room. She was sitting like a statue, watching the little girl who was sleeping in her daughter’s bed. Dicta’s mother was holding a grayish-white teddy bear in her hands, one that looked like it had seen many years of affection and play.
Louise took a deep breath of relief and watched as Dicta’s father nodded at his wife, turned on his heel, and returned to the kitchen without saying anything. Anne appeared to be unresponsive. She hadn’t noticed that anyone had entered the room.
Louise walked back out to the hall and found Mik’s cell phone number.
“I need two ambulances,” she said. “I think Aida is alive, but Anne Møller is in shock or some sort of trance, or whatever the hell you’d call it. I suggest that we call Jakobsen, the crisis psychologist at National Hospital who Unit A uses. I don’t know of anyone else out here who can handle this kind of thing. If he can’t come here, we’ll have to bring her in to him, because she needs help ASAP, and her family-practice doctor doesn’t seem to have seen fit to follow up on her condition.”
Louise went back into the bedroom and said Anne’s name. Silently and without startling Anne, she walked over and sat down next to her on the edge of the bed and tugged slightly on the comforter that was covering Aida’s little body. The girl was breathing peacefully, and, as far as Louise could tell, there were no signs of violence or assault. She was sleeping with her hair spread out over the pillow.
Louise briefly considered whether she ought to pick up the girl and take her somewhere safe. But there was nothing in the room that gave her a reason to feel any danger.
On the other hand, she had no doubt that Anne Møller was beyond reach. Her grief had taken root in her and was firmly in control of her actions. But there was no sign of evil intent in her face. Anne had taken the child because she’d thought they’d taken hers.
The sirens sliced through the peaceful, upscale neighborhood. The two ambulances arrived at the same time, immediately followed by police cars. Henrik came in without saying anything, and Louise took Anne’s hand and said that now Aida had to go home to her mother again.
“My little girl came back,” Anne said, looking at Louise through unfocused eyes.
They heard footsteps in the hallway and an EMT stepped into the room, followed by a colleague. Suddenly the room seemed very small. Anne stood up and bent down over Aida, who had started to stir. The little girl sleepily rubbed her eyes and stretched her small body.
The next movement came as Louise was still sitting on the bed looking at the girl, relieved that she was in good condition. Anne’s hands locked around the girl’s throat in a chokehold that squeezed a deep gurgle out of her mouth and made her eyes shoot open in fear.
The two men were on Dicta’s mother in a heartbeat, but she had a firm grip and put all her weight into her efforts. The girl twitched a couple of times, and a moment later she stopped moving.
At that instant, Louise swung Dicta’s heavy photo album against Anne’s head with all her might. The blow flung the mother off the bed, and Louise scooped up the unconscious girl and was quickly out of the room with her in her arms. She laid Aida on the kitchen floor and stayed by her side while the EMTs started CPR. She kept calling the little girl’s name until Aida finally opened her eyes in confusion and looked around. Her eyes were bloodshot and radiated terror, but her cries were soundless. The pain in her throat held them back.
Louise heard Camilla at the door and made room as Henrik led her in. Louise knew Camilla had been at the police station along with the rest of the journalists, waiting for Storm’s press conference. Maybe Storm had thought she could help, because, with Camilla, the girl felt safe and protected through the shock of waking without her family.
Anne Møller was carried out. Henrik turned away when they walked by with his wife, but the pain in his eyes was so visible that it sliced through Louise.
“Don’t you want to ride with her?” Louise asked, stepping over to him.
He shook his head imperceptibly, but walked slowly out to the ambulance anyway. Louise stood there in the doorway, watching as he climbed in to sit down next to the gurney.
Camilla was sitting with Aida in her lap. She was stroking the little girl’s hair and kept saying that there was nothing else to be afraid of.
Louise walked over and tapped her shoulder.
“Let’s go,” she said, holding the front door open for them.
There were seven or eight cars outside. Several of them contained folks from the press, but Louise ignored them and left it to Camilla to decide how she wanted to tackle the intrusive photographers, one of them from her own paper. They’d figured out that there’d been a massive police response in town and had followed the sirens to the Møller family’s house.
Louise held open the door to the backseat of the police cruiser for Camilla, who was holding Aida in her arms. Once the door was slammed shut, Louise got behind the wheel and headed toward Dysseparken 16B.
The couple had seen them from the window, and Ibrahim and Sada were standing in the doorway when they came up the stairs. With tears in their eyes, they reached for their youngest daughter. In the living room, Hamid sat glued to the large TV screen, as if he still weren’t ready to accept input from the world around him.
Aida clung to Camilla’s neck before she let herself flop down into her mother’s arms.
“We need to take her to the hospital,” Louise said from where she was standing in the background.
“But we think she should have a few minutes with you before she undergoes the medical tests,” Camilla added, smiling at Sada. Then she gave Aida a kiss on the
forehead and started back down the stairs.
Louise followed her, but promised before she left that the family would receive a detailed description of what had happened. One of the ambulances had followed them back to Dysseparken and was now standing by to transport the family to Holbæk Hospital.
When Louise got back to the police station, she went straight into her office and shut the door firmly behind her. She needed to gather her thoughts and pack away all her personal and private feelings before questioning Michael Mogensen. It wouldn’t do her any good to sit there face to face with the indicted man and his appointed defense lawyer with all her raw emotions tumbling around in her head.
In annoyance she removed the envelope that had been placed on top of the case file that had been sitting on her desk when she had hurried out the door following Henrik’s call. Then she got curious, because it was anonymous, with no police logo on it, nor did it have any name on it. Mik was absorbed in something on his computer, taking notes from whatever he was reading.
Louise tore open the envelope and pulled out a photocopy of a map. Confused, she tried to find Cape Tuse or Hønsehalsen on it. She was assuming it was a map of the crime scenes that she was supposed to use during the questioning, but she couldn’t make any sense of it.
“It’s Växjö, in Sweden,” Mik told her from the other side of the desk, tossing her another anonymous envelope. “Here’s a little about the route we’ll paddle.”
She stared at him, unable to get her brain working and not wanting to be surprised with anything whatsoever.
“I’m not paddling any route,” she finally said.
“Yes, you are. In eight days, you and I are going to Sweden to do a little paddling on a lovely system of lakes. It’s right in the middle of mushroom-picking season, and we’ll camp and cook our food over a campfire.”
She stared at him with her mouth open and was about to protest vehemently, but he beat her to it.