by Sara Bl
“What the fuck is going on here?” Camilla burst out.
She was heading out into the hall when Heilmann grabbed her arm.
Jørgen reached out toward her and in an instant Stig was all over him.
Suhr waved them on so no more words or looks could be exchanged.
“How much do you know about Jørgen Zachariassen?” Suhr asked, coming in and standing in front of Camilla.
Camilla walked over and took a seat in Lars’s chair. “He’s, uh, my boyfriend’s brother. He didn’t do this—it can’t be him!”
Louise could tell that Camilla was starting to put two and two together.
“How much did he know about your set-up with Susanne?” Louise asked.
Suhr moved closer to Camilla.
Camilla said, “Nothing! Nothing at all. You listen to me. He’s a totally normal guy,” she defended him. “He’s a computer consultant, and he’s totally normal. I simply cannot believe he raped anyone at all. Besides, he lived with a woman for years. They broke up two years ago, when she left him, but he has a totally normal life.” Camilla was talking loudly and quickly. “You cannot seriously think it was him!”
“It’s hard to think anything else since he was the one holding a knife to Susanne’s throat a few hours ago. We just took a blood sample so we can run his DNA, and then we’ll know for sure.”
Camilla sat shaking her head as Suhr spoke. “What about Henning? Does he know Jørgen is here?” she asked, no longer listening to Suhr.
Suhr seized on the topic. “What was the relationship between the two of them like?” he asked, and was about to proceed when Heilmann signaled him to stop. With a brief arm gesture, Heilmann motioned toward his office.
Louise vaguely registered that Jørgen Zachariassen had been taken into Suhr’s office, and the last thing she heard was Suhr’s authoritative voice telling him, “You can take a seat there.”
Then Suhr’s door closed behind them.
Suddenly it was completely quiet. Louise looked over at Camilla, who was sitting there staring straight ahead as if in a trance. Slowly Louise summoned the energy to move. She stood up, a little wobbly, walked over, stood right next to her friend, and started stroking her hair.
Call Me Princess is fiction. Everything could have happened, some of it did, but most of it came from my imagination, so the characters in this book do not bear any likeness to real people. The world in which the story is set has a fair amount in common with the real world, but I used authorial freedom to allow the homicide division to work throughout Copenhagen, even though they normally don’t deal with cases in Frederiksberg. Morgenavisen and Nightwatch.dk are purely fictional.
As I wrote, it was crucial for me to familiarize myself with the real version of this world so I could create as realistic a portrayal as possible. Thus I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to everyone who so graciously and helpfully welcomed me and took the time to answer my questions. My friend at the Forensic Pathology Institute and my friends at Unit A with the Copenhagen Police deserve special thanks. Without their help, I could not have created this story about Louise Rick.
Thanks as well to Lotte Thorsen, who read along and backed me up, and my clever editor, Lisbeth Møller-Madsen.
Any errors there may be are exclusively my own.
SARA BLAEDEL
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 2011 by Sara Blædel
translation copyright © 2011 by Erik J. Macki and Tara F. Chace
interior design by Maria Fernandez
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