by Sara Bl
She stared dully at the fruit basket sitting next to the cash register and looked at the floor as the guys ahead of her filled their plates with steaming helpings of pork meatballs in curry sauce. She took a piece of rye bread and a banana and was ready to head back down to the office.
“Come on,” her partner said, nodding toward the long cafeteria table.
Louise reluctantly followed. She really just wanted to go back to the office and eat there so she could keep working. She had just briefed the lieutenant on an idea she’d had the night before and really wanted to get started.
“Fine by me,” Suhr had said, hurrying on his way.
She suddenly realized that Suhr was going easy on her. He was babying her because she had told him Peter had moved in with someone else, and Suhr thought searching dating sites would be easier on her while he had everyone else out searching for Bjergholdt and his victims. She was so furious at the special treatment that she couldn’t stop herself and, before she knew it, she was standing in his office, taking him to task, and lecturing him about how the Internet had become the preferred reality for lots of people. She was quite a way into her monologue before she noticed that Sergeant Heilmann was sitting in the chair across from Suhr, watching the whole scene with disapproval on her face.
“Uh, hi,” Louise said, nodding at Heilmann.
Then she turned back to Suhr and continued, while slinking back toward the door, “I suppose I could just search more later if you’d rather put me on something else.”
She stared him intently in the eyes with all the strength she could muster, hoping to convince him that she didn’t require any special treatment.
Suhr looked like a man who was finally ready to admit that he didn’t understand women. He had no idea what Louise was trying to tell him, so he decided to pretend she hadn’t said the last part. Instead he just gave her a friendly, if slightly bewildered, nod and asked her to keep doing what she was doing.
—
SITTING AT THE TABLE IN THE CAFETERIA WITH LARS, LOUISE discovered that she had forgotten how nice it was to listen to the conversation at the lunch table. She put off her work, fetched a cup of coffee, and got an update on the case about the man they had charged with murdering his ex-wife. The charges had been dropped, and Willumsen was so frustrated that he had decided to take a long weekend with his wife, and no one could remember him ever doing that before.
Everyone agreed that the most frustrating part was that there was practically a hundred-percent chance that the guy was guilty, but because it was perfectly reasonable that his fingerprints were all over her apartment and because a witness had felt pressured into making a false statement about something not pivotal to the case, but a false statement nonetheless, the whole thing had fallen apart. He’d walked out of Vestre Prison a free man and had already sent his children out of the country. Unless they found some new evidence, the police were going to be forced to accept that he would get away with stabbing his wife to death and they wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
“That’s the way it is. We’re going to have to close the case. You just end up beating yourself up if you can’t let it go and admit that sometimes luck and circumstances favor the bad guys,” said Detective Pihl, who’d worked closely on the case, with a resigned shrug.
Louise agreed, but didn’t like hearing this, because the Bjergholdt case could easily end up the same way. If they couldn’t ID him soon, the case would land in the same cold-case pile, she thought. Their problem was just the opposite, though—they had the evidence, but not the guy.
—
WHILE SHE WAS IN THE CAFETERIA, LOUISE RECEIVED A TEXT MESSAGE from Camilla: “Do you want to get out of town this weekend?” Camilla and Markus were going to Sorø, and Louise was tempted, but she was seeing Flemming that night and having coffee with Peter on Saturday, so she sent a brief text back saying she couldn’t and then sat down at her computer.
Nightwatch.dk. She needed an account to get in. She didn’t have one, so she had to sign up for one first. She wanted to get Lars to help her, but he was gone when she got back from the cafeteria.
Well, I suppose I can probably figure it out on my own, she thought, trying to think of a login name. She ended up using initials, just not her own. Instead, she stole her sister-in-law’s. Trine had changed her last name to Rick after she married Mikkel, but she kept her maiden name as her middle name, and it grated on Louise’s ears whenever she heard her say Trine Madsen Rick. It just didn’t go together.
Louise typed in TMR and hoped the site would accept a login name that was only three characters long. It didn’t. There had to be four. To her own childish amusement, she deleted Rick from her sister-in-law’s name, made her into Trine Madsen again, and shortened that to TRIM, which the site accepted. A colorful welcome screen popped up, and the menu bar on the left explained how to navigate on the site and which bars, nightclubs, and dance clubs you could visit on Nightwatch.dk. The goal was for late-night party animals to get photographed by Nightwatch’s photographers, who roamed around the city, and the pictures would be posted on the site.
Obviously you could also use your own camera. The site had really taken off, now that so many people had cameras in their cell phones. So people texted their pictures to Nightwatch.dk and wrote who they were out with or who they had met at the bar and maybe a brief comment. You used your Nightwatch profile name, and the pictures were posted right away. So then if you were surfing the site from home or on your smart phone and you saw a cute guy hanging out by the bar in one of these clubs, you could either hurry down there and hope he was still there, or you could write him if the picture was tagged with his profile name. Based on the pictures featured on the home page, it was obvious that not everybody realized they were being photographed, and yet their friends tagged them in the photos anyway.
Louise clicked on “Thursday” to see who she could have met if she had been in downtown Copenhagen the previous night: some guys named Søsser, Herring, and Danny stood awkwardly with their arms around each other smiling at the lens on the phone. Louise guessed it was a cell-phone camera because of the blurry images. She sighed when she realized there were eight pages of the same kind of tiny thumbnails she would have to click and zoom if she wanted to have any hope of making out the faces—and these thumbnails were just from one of the many downtown locations. She was starting to get a sense of how many pictures there must be for Friday and Saturday nights.
Tons of names and tons of drunken people. There were also pictures of people engaging in various types of transactions. She noted that she ought to tell drug enforcement about this while she was at it, surprised that people let themselves be photographed like this.
She kept going, zooming pictures, closing them again, and clicking the next one as fast as her laptop would permit. There were a few people her age! They were sitting at the bar drinking mixed drinks. The caption said “Sip” and “Motor3.” Louise double-clicked “Sip” and pulled up her profile. There weren’t any pictures on her profile, but you could e-mail her. Louise closed that and tried “Motor3.” His profile included a good selection of photos.
Lars was back, although Louise hadn’t really noticed him come in. She was deep in concentration, staring at her screen. She had just realized there were pictures from the dating mixer out in Holmen, but since she was being systematic about the whole thing, she was moving back through time and had only gotten to Saturday night so far. There hadn’t been any sign of Bjergholdt in the places she had tried, and she also knew there was only a minimal chance that she would suddenly recognize him in one of the pictures. But he had been at the mixer, and that demonstrated to her that he was the kind of guy who went out on the town, so it was worth a try.
Heilmann stopped by periodically after that and looked over Louise’s shoulder. The sergeant had been much quicker than Suhr to appreciate what Louise had found. The image quality of the mixer photos varied dramatically. In most of them, the lighting was so bad it was ha
rd to see much but blurry figures standing against a dark background.
“We probably won’t be able to use them in a lineup with picture quality like that,” Heilmann said before returning to her own office. “But if you find him, we’ll get a tech to see if he can clean it up a little.”
Louise saw a lot of old friends as she leafed through, clip by clip. Stine Mogensen and her friend Annette showed up in several of the pictures, and she realized it would take more than “Duke” and Friday night’s experience to keep them away from the nightlife in the city.
He wasn’t there, she determined, feeling empty inside without knowing quite why she had let herself get her hopes up so much during her search. She closed the album of photos from the mixer and moved on to last Thursday without much enthusiasm. She was just about fed up with the countless photos. She jumped when her phone rang. She glanced at the display, but didn’t recognize the number.
“Unit A, Louise Rick speaking.”
“Hi, it’s Susanne. What did you think of my interview?”
Confused and mentally depleted, it took her a second to remember who Susanne was and what interview she was talking about. She looked up from her computer screen and focused on trying to snap out of it.
“I actually haven’t had a chance to read it yet,” Louise admitted, glancing over at today’s paper, which was sitting on her desk. “But I have it right here. Were you happy with it?”
“Very. I just talked to Camilla, who told me that the paper got a lot of positive feedback on it. People want to support me, make sure I’m okay, and help me find a new place to live and another job,” Susanne said, sounding happy.
“That’s great! But remember to keep a low profile,” Louise urged. She noticed what a damper that put on Susanne’s cheerful voice, and she regretted saying it immediately. It was amazing what an article like that could do. People came together when it was spelled out on paper for them that their fellow man was in need.
“I don’t mean you shouldn’t accept the help people are offering you,” Louise hastened to add. “Just that you shouldn’t rush into a new apartment or job right now while the paper is set to follow your every move.”
“I wasn’t planning to,” Susanne responded a little stiffly, continuing in a more businesslike tone, “but I agreed with Camilla that I would write a sort of diary about my life in hiding, about my thoughts, and what it’s like having to move because you don’t feel safe anymore.”
Louise didn’t know if she should laugh or chew Susanne out. She decided to do neither, although her contemplations were cut short when Susanne continued, “I actually called to say you don’t need to worry about getting me a computer anymore. Morgenavisen is letting me borrow one.”
Louise rested her forehead in the palm of her hand. She didn’t know if it was bad or good for Susanne to have ended up in Camilla’s orbit. Maybe it would help her make a clean break from her old life and create her new identity, or maybe it would turn her into a media sensation—some poor thing people felt bad about for a while and then forgot about again just as quickly.
“Okay, I’ll shelve the request,” Louise said, “but don’t make any agreement with the newspaper that would allow readers to contact you directly, because then there’s a risk he will.”
Susanne mumbled something or other unintelligible, and Louise predicted that Morgenavisen would provide an e-mail address when they ran Susanne’s diary. Doubtless there were plenty of readers who would make use of the opportunity to contact her. Louise would bring this up with Suhr and Heilmann.
“What phone are you calling from?” Louise asked.
Susanne’s phone number usually showed up on her caller ID, so if the call had come from that number, it should have shown on the display.
“It’s a phone Morgenavisen gave me so I wouldn’t have to use mine.”
Now Louise saw what was going on. The newspaper was staking its claim. Camilla was on the story, and she was making sure no one else could get ahold of Susanne. Smart thinking, Camilla! Go in and ask for a raise, she thought. At the same time, it told her that the paper obviously thought there could be more victims. That the story was big enough that it would headline all summer. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to make sure they had the exclusive rights to Susanne’s story. She pictured Camilla and imagined her weekend in the countryside with her son and boyfriend. Here’s hoping her fairy tale wouldn’t be interrupted by a new rape, Louise thought bitterly.
“Well, I’ll talk to you soon,” Louise said when she couldn’t think of anything else. When you got right down to it, Susanne wasn’t really doing anything wrong. She was just doing what most people would, and at least her mother wasn’t anywhere in the picture. Not that Louise could see, anyway.
When Louise updated Suhr on this development, he decided he wanted to talk to Camilla himself and find out what her plans were for Susanne. He didn’t want to see the case turn into some kind of media circus, as he put it, but if the paper could guarantee that her address would remain secret and they filtered the e-mail she received he didn’t have any objections. Louise guessed that Camilla would humor him and agree to notify him right away if any interesting messages came in. Louise saw that Camilla had found a way to make sure she stayed one step ahead of the police. Now suddenly she was the one who would notify them, not the other way around.
When Louise looked at her watch, she realized she only had an hour to get home, shower, and change before she was supposed to meet Flemming. She quickly shut off her computer and raced out the door.
—
JUST A TAD LATE, LOUISE STOOD, SLIGHTLY WINDED, PEERING AT THE densely populated bar counter, but there was no sign of Flemming Larsen. She walked over to an open table in the corner near the kitchen and had just sat down when he walked in the door.
“Have you been waiting long?” he asked apologetically.
She reassured him she had just gotten there herself. They moved into the restaurant section of the café, where he had made a reservation.
Louise felt awkward. She was wearing more makeup than she usually did for work. She was wearing a turquoise tunic from Pureheart—borrowed from Camilla—over her jeans, and for once she was letting her long, unruly curls fall freely. Fleming, on the other hand, looked like he had come straight from work.
“I got called out just as I was getting ready to come,” he said, sensing she was feeling a little overdressed.
She had a sinking feeling in her stomach, involuntarily imagining that a new rape had been reported after she left the office.
He shook his head.
“A stabbing,” he said. “I met Willumsen at the scene.”
Louise shook her head in confusion, saying, “I thought Willumsen was away for a long weekend with his wife.”
“He was, but he arrived right after me, so he must have ditched his wife at the hotel the instant Suhr called,” Flemming said, smiling. “He feels sure this was a revenge killing. It was the same man who was released the other day for the murder of his ex-wife in Nykøbing Sjaelland we were speaking about at lunch. He was stabbed in the chest and the back. It looks like more than one attacker. Willumsen’s guess is that the guy was bragging a little too loudly about the charges being dropped, which must have provoked the woman’s family.”
Louise listened without feeling anything. One murder case took over for another. The man had been going to go free, even though he had murdered his ex-wife. Now he was dead. Louise thought about the children, who had been sent abroad and no longer had a father or a mother to come home to.
She let Flemming order for them, watching him as he studied the wine list. She suddenly realized how much she longed for companionship, now that she was out and surrounded by people having a good time. She hadn’t felt that in ages.
She finally gave in at four in the morning and let Flemming help her into a cab. She had had way too much to drink and smoked way too many cigarettes. Even in her fog, she was a little ashamed that she had g
otten so carried away and out of control, but it had been a fun night.
25
WHEN LOUISE WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, HER HEAD WAS throbbing so violently that she lay there for a long time, pulling herself together before she slowly pushed herself over the edge of the bed into a sitting position. They had mostly drunk gin after dinner, and the taste was still in her mouth. She got up and brushed her teeth and scurried back into bed, while she waited for someone to pour her back into the bottle, as her father used to say when she was younger.
It had been a good evening, and even in the midst of her hangover she felt alive, as though something had been liberated inside her. She looked at the clock. She had an hour until she was supposed to meet Peter. Maybe she should cancel. Or maybe she ought to march right down to that café stinking of liquor and cigarette smoke and not give a damn.
—
“ARE YOU SURE YOU’RE OKAY?” PETER ASKED UNCERTAINLY AFTER they’d finished their second cup of coffee and had squared away all the practical matters about dividing up their possessions.
She nodded in affirmation and asked “How about you?” She had avoided asking before.
“Yeah, things are great,” he said quickly.
That’s a fucking lie, she could see that. Suddenly she noticed how he looked. He seemed sad, but was trying to hide it.
“I mean, obviously it’s a bit of an adjustment,” he added, watching her with an intent look that she didn’t have the energy to interpret. “It’s different.”
She could imagine.
He looked at his watch and started getting ready to go. “We’re going out to Lina’s sister’s place this afternoon. She’s pregnant, and there’s obviously a lot of baby stuff to talk about even though the little guy’s not coming for another seven months.”