The cab stopped behind the police car that was parked halfway up on the sidewalk at the northwestern entrance to the star fortress. A uniformed officer he didn’t recognize was leaning against the hood, smoking. Lars flashed his badge. The officer nodded, spat tobacco, and pointed at the entrance.
“In there and first path on the right. You’ll be able to see the lights after a couple of hundred metres. The Crime Scene Unit has arrived.”
Lars thanked him, gave him the names of the others on his investigative team, and told him to leave when they’d arrived. There was no reason to advertise their presence. The reporters would have to find out for themselves what had happened.
He disappeared into the darkness of the star fortress. A pale half moon shone, making the trees shimmer and casting dancing grey and silver shadows. The branches groaned; the leaves rustled.
He hurried on. The night was warm and he quickly started to sweat.
He heard the generator first; then he saw the gleam from its lights reflected faintly off the leaves, a pale glow shining on the bastion. He found the stairs, ran up, and stepped into the circle of light.
Bint and Frelsén circled around in their white outfits, their noses to the ground. For some reason, Frelsén had removed his hair net. Toke and Lisa stood outside the cordon. Lars walked over to them, pulled out his cigarettes.
He looked at his watch. Ten past three.
“The ambulance drove off with the girl less than ten minutes ago.” Lisa stuck a match in her mouth. “She’s at Rigshospitalet now.”
“Did you get a chance to speak with her?”
Toke nodded. “She’s in bad shape, but not quite as bad as Stine.” He flipped through his notebook. Lisa shone her flashlight so Toke could read. “Louise Jørgensen, twenty-two years old, lives on Livjægergade, right here in Østerbro. She’d been to Penthouse” —Toke paused for effect — “and was cycling home down at Grønningen when another cyclist went to pass her. He knocked her over and dragged her off the bike path, through the moat, and up here. Lisa has been down to check it out. Louise’s bike was halfway up the sidewalk with a buckled front wheel.”
“I pulled it to the side, leaned it against a tree,” she explained.
A shadow darted past, a dark silhouette against the blaze of lights. Then it disappeared into the darkness.
Toke gave a start. “What was that?”
“A fox,” Lisa said.
Toke shook his head. “There aren’t any foxes in the centre of Copenhagen.”
“There are. They live off trash, get into garbage cans. I’ve seen a few of them on Østerbrogade at night,” Lisa held her ground.
“If you think I’m buying that —”
Just then Frank came up the stairs.
“Kim A will be here in just a moment. He’s bringing coffee.” Frank shook hands with Frelsén and Bint. He looked tired. “Has she been taken to the hospital?”
Lars nodded. “Toke and Lisa were just bringing me up to speed.” He asked them to proceed.
“So, Louise Jørgensen is riding her bike from Penthouse . . .” Toke said.
Frank whistled.
Toke continued: “She was knocked down on the bike path and dragged up here. He tears her clothes off on the way up, punches and kicks her repeatedly. He rapes her up here — anally.” Toke pointed at Frelsén who was towering in the middle of the circle of light. “When he’s done, he spits on her, kicks her in the kidneys, and takes off in the same direction he came from. Probably on bike.”
“We’ll call Forensics in the morning,” Lars said. “Push for a quick response on the DNA analysis of the shirt. Who found her?”
“No one,” Lisa said. “She called it in herself. Her purse and cell phone weren’t far away and —”
Heavy steps came up the stairs. Kim A appeared with two white paper bags from 7-Eleven.
“Coffee’s here.” He crossed over to the small group and started handing them out.
“Frank, Lisa. Boss —?”
Just as Lars reached out for the steaming paper cup, Kim A handed it to Toke. After an awkward silence and with obvious unease, Toke finally accepted the cup. Frelsén and Bint came over and each got a cup. Finally Kim A handed Lars the last coffee.
“Did you think I’d forgotten you?” he laughed.
Bint grimaced, then turned to Lars. “There’s leaves and dirt everywhere. I followed the trail halfway down the bastion. Presumably it continues all the way to the water and onto the street. As far as organic material —”
Frelsén took over. “Traces of semen and saliva and a single blonde hair — Louise is standard medium blonde. And then we have a set of footprints from a sneaker, between sizes nine and ten and a half. Surprisingly good coffee, Kim.” Frelsén nodded at Kim A.
Lars drank slowly. The coffee tasted burnt and of asphalt. Filter coffee that had spent too much time on the hot plate. Exactly like the coffee at the station. It was almost too homey.
“Frank, Toke,” he said, “talk to the cab drivers again. They must know you by now.” He allowed himself a little smile. “Kim A, you stay here, help Bint and Frelsén. Lisa, we’re going to Rigshospitalet.”
He drained the coffee in one long gulp, crumpled up the paper cup with one hand, and threw it into the nearest garbage can.
Again it was Christine Fogh who had admitted the victim. Louise Jørgensen was still awake when they arrived. It had all happened so quickly; the only thing she could remember was the attacker’s blue eyes.
On their way down from the Juliane Marie Centre, Lisa called in and requested a patrol car to drive them to Penthouse. Outside, day was rising. The golden glow rose, large and mighty in the sky above Copenhagen. The 3A bus drove past, heading toward Østerbro. Lars closed his eyes, but he couldn’t shake the image of Louise’s one arm, stiff and white above her hip, wrapped up in a thick layer of gauze; the shaking and far-too-thin body covered by a hospital sheet.
Lars’s phone rang. It was the duty officer.
“Your suspect was arrested half an hour ago. An alert colleague filling up his tank recognized him at a gas station outside Roskilde. He’s hopped up on a few substances. They put him in detention in Roskilde and will be bringing him in later this morning.”
Lars clenched his free hand in a silent gesture.
“We’ve got him. We’ve got Mikkel Rasmussen.” He put the phone in his pocket. The fatigue made his eyes ache. “Now where’s that patrol car?”
Lars and Lisa caught the bar manager in the doorway of Penthouse nightclub. She was about to lock up but agreed to find the names and numbers of the three photographers who had been at the club that night. None of them were particularly enthusiastic about being dragged out of bed. One refused to give them his pictures until late the next morning. But when they rang his front doorbell ten minutes later, he still let them in.
By seven o’clock they were in a patrol car on their way back to the station. They were heading down Nørre Voldgade when Lars remembered that he had promised to call and wake up Maria. He pulled out his cell.
She didn’t answer until the seventh ring.
“Time to get up, beautiful.” He could hear how tired he sounded.
“Mmmm.” Maria didn’t sound like someone who was planning on getting out of bed any time soon. Didn’t she have school? He suddenly went cold. Wasn’t there something about an exam yesterday?
“How — didn’t you have an exam yesterday?” He coughed, turned to face the window, away from Lisa’s glare. He had a feeling that he had “Bad Father” painted on his forehead in bold letters. “Did it go well?”
“Yeah, it went all right.” Did she hesitate a little? But it sounded like she was happy.
“All right? What does that mean?”
“Well, it was just a mock exam. But I did get a ten.” Yes, there was no doubt. She was happy.
&nbs
p; “Ten? That’s great. Let’s celebrate when I get home.”
“We’re going to Grandma’s tonight. Did you forget?”
Apparently there was a lot he had forgotten.
“So we’ll celebrate with Grandma.” He sunk back in the seat. “But I’m going to need a couple hours of sleep when I get home. We’re working straight through.”
“Just catch him, Dad. See you later.”
He was about to say goodbye, but Maria had already hung up.
“Did you forget about your daughter’s exam?” Lisa shook her head.
Lars looked out the window. It had started to rain. A pouring blanket dragging across Rådhuspladsen and moving toward Tivoli.
Chapter 19
Sanne sat down as she had been told. She was fiddling with the zipper on her light summer jacket. The view from Ulrik’s office was breathtaking, but the room was stuffy. Didn’t any of those big windows open? A hint of a headache was sailing around the back of her head. She’d had a little too much to drink at dinner the night before. And then there was the argument she’d had with Martin afterwards.
But there was something else too. Her conversation with Lars had left her feeling sad and with a sense of unease. His hunch and their mutual, unspoken agreement regarding her case.
Ulrik was sitting across from her with his back to the window. His elbows rested on the desk, his head in his hands.
“So Meriton Bukoshi’s alibi stands up?”
“Yes, and Ukë’s. I’ve checked everyone who was at the club that night, but —”
Ulrik waved her off. “We have to let them go. I’ve already had their lawyer on the phone twice today.”
Sanne decided to give it a go. “I don’t think it’s them anyway.” The nails on her right thumb and ring finger started to click against each other. Stop it.
“What do you mean?”
“They paid money to bring Mira up here. Why kill her after such a short time?”
“But they did beat her before she went missing?”
Sanne put her hand in her pocket. Her fingers twitched once, then rested against her thigh. “As far as I understand, it’s quite common. Beating and rape. It breaks the girls.”
Ulrik shook his head, then swivelled in his chair. She couldn’t see what he was doing; she saw only his thin hair sticking up above the back of the chair. Out by the reception, an elevator opened. The small ping reached them even through the closed door.
“It was easier in the old days,” Ulrik said. “No trafficking, none of this callous violence.” Suddenly the chair spun around. Ulrik was facing her again. “What do you think we should do?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. Aren’t you the sharpest investigator in all of Jutland?”
“Oh, that —” She was on the verge of telling him about her conversation with Lars the night before. But something stopped her. It probably wasn’t a good idea to mention it right now. “As far as I’ve been able to uncover, glutaraldehyde isn’t something you can buy over the counter. Hospitals and dentists buy it wholesale, and farmers use it for cleaning pigpens. But Forensics has assembled the remains of the glass eye. It arrived this morning.”
“Yes?” Ulrik squinted, rested his fingertips on either side of the desk pad.
“It’s green. In fact, it’s a really bad fit, so it wasn’t made for Mira. It was suitably large enough so as not to fall out as long as she was alive —” She swallowed. “We didn’t find all the shards, so the reconstruction isn’t complete, but you get a good idea of how it looked. They also pulled half a thumbprint from the back.”
“And?” Ulrik got up halfway in his chair.
“Unfortunately, it’s not on file.”
Ulrik waved a hand in front of him. The apathy that had weighed on him only minutes earlier was gone. His gaunt frame suddenly exuded vitality and energy. Even his grey skin began to glow.
“Listen: the two brothers supply girls to a customer who wants something quite specific — girls with glass eyes.”
Sanne’s jaw dropped. “That sounds like something from a bad episode of CSI.”
“You’d be surprised.” Ulrik looked out the window.
“Then what about —”
“First and foremost, we need to follow up on that eye. That’s the best lead we’ve got right now.”
Sanne got up. She had better get hold of Allan.
“As for the Bukoshi brothers,” Ulrik continued, “I’ll get a court order for a wiretap. We’ll put the club under surveillance too. It’s vacation time, so you and Allan are going to have to take quite a few shifts.”
Sanne nodded. Sometimes she regretted having left Kolding at all.
Chapter 20
Maria was sitting in the cathedral-like assembly hall below the giant copy of Thorvaldsen’s classic sculpture Jason with the Golden Fleece. She was nervous, biting her nails even though that was frowned upon here. A pair of high heels attached to a pair of ridiculously long legs power-clicked across the marble tiles. An aggressive echo followed them all the way through the assembly hall. A couple of girls from her class sat at the table next to her, staring at an iPad. In less than forty-five minutes, it was her turn. Mock exam in oral Danish. Yikes. Mom said, “It’s only a mock exam,” but what did she know? And Dad? Did he even know she had another exam today? He hadn’t mentioned it on the phone.
She started thinking about the cab ride the night before. Why did he act like such an idiot? It had actually turned out to be an OK night, and then he couldn’t even give her a proper answer when she asked him about something important.
She tried concentrating on the photocopy in her hands. Søren Ulrik Thomsen’s Poetry in the Night. One line read, “The Path of the Intoxicated.” No wonder their teacher had chosen that poem. It had been a long time since she had seen such a well-kept drinker’s nose.
Luckily none of her parents had problems with alcohol. Well, Ulrik might have a few too many sometimes, more than was good for him, but then again he wasn’t her dad.
In a way, she understood why Dad had run away from everything. If only it hadn’t hurt so much. If only she could have gone with him. But she had to think about school, her future, yada yada yada. They made her sick. Two months alone with Dad, with no stupid teachers, no overprotective Mom and her expectations. It could have been fantastic.
She heard a chair scrape the floor a few tables away. A couple of twelfth graders sat down. Christian and his friends. He was the one with the nice ass, the sandy hair, and the twinkle in his eye. Almost all the girls in the class, the entire school even, were prepared to open their legs for him if he even looked their way.
She glanced at his table from behind the photocopy. Was he looking over here? No, it was probably just her imagination. Just concentrate on that crappy poem.
sleep’s ether seeps
through the half-open mouths
clings heavily to the bodies’ dance
What did that mean? It sounded creepy, almost like a horror film. And then the ending: “The way of the drunken to a dreamless sleep.” A chill ran down her spine. She had to get up, move her legs a little. But maybe it also meant something else? The bodies’ dance. She glanced over at the twelfth graders again. No. Stop it. Stop.
“Oh my god, Maria. Isn’t that your dad?”
“What do you mean?” She walked over to the other table. Leise and Christina were looking at her with their mouths agape. Two stupid cows with big tits.
She leaned over Christina’s shoulder. Berlingske was on the iPad. There was a picture of Dad — not the best — and beneath it a short article.
Another Rape in Central Copenhagen. Suspect in Custody
Last night, another young woman was raped in central Copenhagen, this time at the star fortress. Police have detained a suspect in this violent case. The night of June 15, a 24-year-old Danis
h woman was raped at Püchlers Bastion in Østre Anlæg, Copenhagen. A man of similar age and Danish descent is currently remanded in custody and is due for questioning later this morning. Heading up the investigation, Lars Winkler from Copenhagen Police states, “It’s a very unpleasant case, but we hope to soon have enough evidence for an arraignment.” When questioned whether there was any concrete evidence, Winkler indicated that the case was still under investigation, and that he was therefore unable to comment.
“Isn’t that your dad?” Christina repeated, pointing a long, pale pink fingernail at Lars’s name.
“Uh, yes,” Maria granted. She wasn’t quite sure what kind of status it would give her, having a dad who was a police inspector. Probably only marginally higher than if he had been a garbageman. She had heard that Christina’s dad, for instance, was a film producer.
“I hope he locks up that bastard and throws away the key.” One of Leise’s sandalled feet was rocking back and forth. “Soon everyone’s going to be too afraid to go out anymore.”
Had she heard that correctly? Was her status rising?
Behind her, a chair scraped the floor. Steps echoed through the assembly.
“Hey girls.” It was him. He smiled. At her. “What are you reading?”
Chapter 21
Mikkel Rasmussen sat at the end of the table with his elbows resting on his knees and his head in his hands. A mop of curls covered his face. He groaned. Lars and Lisa looked at each other. They were both tired. Neither of them had slept, and it was already late in the morning.
“I told you, I don’t know her,” a voice said from behind the hair.
“I’ve got the police report from a former girlfriend, one Anne-Mette Møller.” Lisa glanced at the report. “Assault and battery. Is that correct?”
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