by Sara Blaedel
There was no reason for Louise to stay and wait for Toft and Stig to return from Ringsted. She agreed with Heilmann that they would meet on Monday after Lieutenant Suhr’s morning briefing to see where their group stood with the investigation.
A couple of guys from the computer crime unit had stopped by Heilmann’s office late in the day with the results of their search of the three women’s computers. Determining that the women had exchanged email addresses with Mr Noble had given them all hope, but even from the very end of the hallway Heilmann could read, from the faces on the CCU team as they walked into the division, that the search hadn’t come up with anything useful. Mr Noble had used the internet café on H. C. Ørstedsvej and the Østerbro Library on Dag Hammerskölds Allé, so they were back to square one. A couple of detectives from the central station had been assigned to check in at those locations regularly. They were supposed to meet with the regulars Toft hadn’t yet spoken with, to look for anyone who might have noticed the dark-haired man, but that was a shot in the dark, as Suhr would say.
‘People who go to places like that do it precisely to avoid contact with other human beings. They’re only fucking paying attention to what’s on the screen in front of them,’ Suhr had said when they originally decided to ask around for people who might have noticed Jesper Bjergholdt. ‘But of course it’s one of the things we ought to try,’ he conceded in the same breath.
Louise drove to the grocery store to get something to fix for dinner before she picked up Markus. Camilla had said ‘Great!’ right away when Louise asked if it would be okay to pick Markus up that evening.
‘We’ll be home about four-thirty, so I’ll have his bag packed when you get here,’ she said, sounding excited that her son was getting to go out of town for the weekend.
Maybe her excitement also had something to do with the fact that she had suddenly been given a whole Friday night to herself, Louise thought, smiling, as she parked in the garage underneath the Kvickly Mart on Falkoner Allé. She was still thinking about her friend as she navigated her shopping cart along the refrigerated cases, trying to decide what to make for dinner. She sensed that Camilla was very eager to meet this new acquaintance. It wasn’t like her to be so secretive, and that made Louise curious. Camilla wasn’t normally one to hold back on details when she met a man, but it rarely lasted longer than a couple of dates. And there were long dry spells in between her relationships.
Louise had occasionally suspected that Camilla went on these dates just to please her friends – and especially her mother in Skanderborg, who never hid her opinion that her daughter spent too much time on her career and way too little time on herself and her own needs. On the other hand, the few times Camilla had kept her dates to herself, it was usually because they meant a little more to her. Over the years, Louise had learned that, in those cases, there was no point in asking.
She gave up on the idea of anything that required more culinary skill than turning on the oven. She’d spoken with Peter before she left police headquarters, and he still couldn’t tell her when he would be home. He’d been curt and she’d hurried to say that she would fix something for herself and Markus, so he shouldn’t feel any pressure to rush. She grabbed a bag of chicken wings from the frozen-foods aisle, deciding that that would be a good thing to eat in front of the TV.
Louise parked in front of the main entrance to Camilla’s building and rang the buzzer.
‘Is it you? Come on up!’ Markus’s voice yelled through the speaker on the entryphone.
She noted her own happiness as she hurried up the stairs. A loaner kid was really the perfect arrangement for the way her life was set up, she thought, preparing herself for the maelstrom of a reception she usually got.
‘Mum’s in the shower,’ Markus said when they finished hugging.
Louise smiled at him and said that they’d best not bother her then.
‘You’re not bothering me at all,’ Camilla said, sticking her head out of the bathroom with her hair wrapped in a green towel. A second later, she came out into the hallway wearing a short terrycloth bathrobe, smelling of perfume, and gave Louise a kiss on the cheek.
‘Markus is looking forward to this,’ she said, going out to the kitchen to turn on the oven.
Louise followed her and stood in the doorway. ‘Is your date coming over here tonight?’ Louise mimed so Markus wouldn’t hear her question.
Camilla nodded.
Markus was off packing the toys he wanted to bring.
‘He asked if I’d rather meet at a café, but it’s a little less formal if he comes here,’ she said, putting a bottle of tonic water into the fridge to chill.
‘Since you’re meeting for the first time, don’t you think it would be wise to meet somewhere public with other people around?’ Louise suggested, almost knowing what would come next.
Camilla sprinkled flour on the kitchen counter and was rolling out some puff pastry with a rolling pin when she turned around. ‘You know, I have written several pieces about the safety tips SafeChat.dk recommends you follow when you meet someone you’ve only had contact with online,’ she said with a joking scowl. ‘So nice to know you read my articles.’
She kept rolling until the puff pastry couldn’t be stretched any further.
‘Well, since you’ve written about them, I would think you’d follow them!’ Louise tried, having a hard time seeing how the one thing precluded the other.
‘Those safety rules are meant for children and teenagers. “Don’t meet someone you met online without telling a grown-up.” I am a grown-up, so I’ve been told, and I can just shoo him out the door if he’s up to no good,’ she continued.
Louise was in no doubt about Camilla’s ability to shoo men out, but it still sounded risky to her.
Camilla opened the fridge and took out a jar of Glyngøre lumpfish caviar. With a teaspoon, she placed dollops onto the puff pastry at regular intervals and then rolled it up like a jelly roll before cutting it into thin slices, which she laid out flat, like danishes, on a baking sheet.
‘Should I bring my video games?’ Markus shouted from his room.
‘Take your Game Boy so you’ll have it for the drive,’ Camilla answered. ‘Besides,’ she said to Louise, ‘he’s just coming over for a drink. We’re going out to dinner tomorrow night; but if it turns out there’s no spark there, then we can skip the dinner.’ She opened the oven and put the baking sheet in, then she quickly glanced at her watch and asked if Louise and Markus shouldn’t be going.
Louise smiled and called out to Markus.
Camilla was getting out her hairdryer when Markus ran into the bathroom to say goodbye to her. Louise stood there holding his bag over her shoulder, waiting until they were done with their farewells.
‘Can I sit in front?’ Markus asked when they got down to the car.
Louise gave him a smile and tousled his hair. ‘We’ll have none of that, young man. You know I’m a police officer,’ she said, making her voice sound very authoritative.
He bowed his head in a theatrical sulk and opened the back door. His whole goal had been getting her to say that she was a police officer. It surprised her a little that he still thought that was a big deal, and she thought she really ought to enjoy her rock-star status for as long as it lasted.
Markus was lying on Louise’s sofa watching cartoons on TV while she got out their plates and her travel bag. She hadn’t been planning on taking much at first, but her mother had called and said that she wanted to take the opportunity of Louise’s upcoming visit to get the whole family together, so she’d invited Louise’s brother and sister-in-law and their two children. Louise decided, if the whole family was going to be there, that they’d need some extra clothes.
She thought fleetingly about Karsten Flintholm and could still hear him gloating – really taunting – that she was going to have to let him go. It was annoying her because she was usually pretty good at leaving her ‘work hat’ at work and not bringing it home with her. She’d picked up
the technique from a training seminar for homicide detectives and investigators. The imaginary work hat helped people who tended to dwell on their cases even when they were off work. In the beginning she’d had a hard time getting used to this new technique, but now it had become a ritual for her, one she quite unconsciously relied on at times when brutal crimes might otherwise linger in her thoughts overnight. Thoughts of Susanne Hansson and Mr Noble were soon placed far into the recesses of her mind as she went to the kitchen to get a bag of sweets and returned to the living room to watch TV with Markus.
Later, she only just barely heard Peter come home. Markus had been asleep for ages, and she had also fallen asleep. She noticed the mattress yield to his body as he cautiously lay down, taking care not to wake her. She reached over and found his hand, but wasn’t able to climb out of the tight embrace sleep held her in.
12
She saw it coming but couldn’t pull her arm back in. He was too fast as he positioned his weight over her back and then pressed down until she couldn’t breathe. She gasped as she heard something snap in her shoulder. The pain was so intense that her muscles quivered.
He gripped her left arm tightly and tugged her back so that she rolled onto her stomach. Pinned underneath his body, she went limp and her muscles relaxed.
‘Lie still.’
His voice was so close to her ear that a stream of air filled her ear canal.
She noticed that his weight eased up slightly off her back as he leaned over to get a better grasp of the arm under her. She quickly flipped over onto her back, and he lost his balance as she pulled both legs up and kicked him as hard as she could. The impact when she hit him sent a jolt through her body. He reflexively grabbed hold of her ankles. It felt like a knife cutting in deep as he cinched the cable ties.
She instinctively scratched at him before she began hitting out whenever he was close enough. His cheek was bleeding, and she noticed the aggression radiating out of his dark eyes and prepared herself for another blow.
She had vaguely sensed that something was wrong, but had nonetheless ignored the warning signs. He had been attentive and courteous. She had found it strange all along that he didn’t want to exchange pictures, but she had taken that as a compliment, since he had written in one of his first emails that he could tell she was different from the others. He could tell that from the tone of her emails.
A reproachful voice popped up in the back of her mind and mixed with the fear: You were playing with fire. Fight!
She had been enjoying it; she’d flirted. It had been titillating and exciting to write back and forth, looking forward to their first meeting.
She screamed as he tied her wrists together, and kept on screaming as he pushed her down onto the floor. The fitted sheet had come off on one side. She had seen the transformation happen when at one point she had taken control in the bedroom. It had turned her on that he was so nervous, so hesitant and slow in taking off his clothes. A diamond in the rough, she teased him in her mind, as he stood next to the bed fumbling with his shirt buttons.
‘Here, let me,’ she had said affectionately once she had taken off her own clothes. She started undoing his buttons, and that’s when she noticed him change. Something had settled in between them like a chill in the air she was breathing. He stood motionless as she slowly undressed him.
She had smiled at him as he pushed her onto the bed, not seeing what he was hiding in his hand. She thought it was a condom that he was too embarrassed to let her see. Now she realised it had been the sharp bands that he used around her ankles and wrists.
She struggled further onto the floor until he yanked her back up, intending to push her down onto the mattress. She managed to keep her balance on her tightly bound legs and with tremendous force she swung her arms at him. The blow knocked him down, and she was afraid the rage she had ignited in him would kill her.
The silence following their struggle hung thick in the bedroom as he sat, just in his boxers, straddling her chest and arms and forced something hard into her mouth. He reached over for the roll of duct tape he had set on the bed as she lay on the floor, and bit off a piece of tape as she writhed beneath him. She felt his sexual arousal distinctly, and noted to her own astonishment that the fight had also left her own groin quivering and tingling. This helped her relax a little, thinking it would be over soon. It was a game that was exciting to both of them. She had just underestimated him; she hadn’t thought he’d be into this kind of thing, and they hadn’t gone through the rules of the game because she had started undressing him too quickly. So she let him put the tape over her mouth.
She interpreted it as conciliatory when he stared into her eyes intensely, leaning forward into her face, as an expression of their mutual enjoyment. But when he pulled back a little and heavy-handedly forced her knees apart and jammed some hard object up into her, the pain was so intense that everything went black. Her body’s reflexes tensed her already-contracted muscles so the only reaction was a small jerk that made her arms and legs twitch. She was so stunned by the pain that was tearing her apart that she hadn’t given a thought to the fact that she would suffocate if she couldn’t breathe through her nose. She frantically turned her head to the side; the pain stopped and she heard him drop something onto the floor. The dildo she kept in the drawer of her night-stand fleetingly entered her mind; that might be what he had found, but before she finished the thought she felt his hands around her neck. Tears blurred her vision as she looked at him to see when it would stop. He wasn’t squeezing, just letting his hands rest there as he settled on top of her with his full weight and plunged deep between her thighs.
She relaxed a little again. Now it was done: he had had his orgasm. She tried to signal to him with her eyes that it was okay, she had got through it, but even before he yanked her over so she was hanging off the edge of the bed she could tell he had no intention of stopping. Rage shot through her with the same intensity as the blow she had laid into the side of his head. She gathered her strength, and when he tried to flip her onto her stomach she kicked out at him again. Furious, he turned his back to her and left the room.
With difficulty she got up onto her legs and looked around for a weapon, but before she made it around the bed she sensed him behind her. It happened so fast that she didn’t have a chance to parry the blow. Nausea set in as the next blow thundered into her face and everything went black before she hit the floor. She lay there behind the bed with her eyes closed and heard him getting dressed as she felt nausea overwhelm her.
She tried to hold it back by taking steady, deep breaths. Her relief at hearing the main door slam shut behind her made her relax a bit, but it was too late to stop the powerful wave of vomit surging through her like a convulsion. Her immobilised body flinched reflexively, and she fought for air. The next minute felt like an hour.
Another wave of vomit came, but she was no longer aware of it. Unconscious, she lay heavily on the floor and didn’t notice her throat fill up and her cheeks distend.
13
‘We’re going fishing,’ Markus bragged as he bounded out of the car into the yard.
Louise’s mother came out to welcome them. Peter walked over and gave her a kiss on the forehead.
‘Hey, you!’ Louise’s father called from the farmhouse. She waved at him and gave her mother a hug.
Her parents had traded in their apartment in Copenhagen for an old rundown country house before Louise and her brother started at the local primary school. Now it was hard to imagine that her parents had ever been city dwellers, and it was perfectly all right with Louise that they had continued to live in the country. Once in a while she would get an intense urge to sit out in the yard under the enormous apple tree or walk through the fields, which were surrounded by woods. On the other hand, she had a hard time imagining that she would ever move to such a rural area, even though the landscape had become a part of her and filled her with an inner peace so pronounced that she noticed the change the second she stepped out i
nto the yard. She took a deep breath of the fresh air and started carrying their bags in from the car.
‘How’re you guys doing?’ Her father asked the first question as they sat down around the garden furniture on the patio. Louise smiled and contemplated her parents. Everything was as usual. She sighed contentedly and dragged her chair over into the sun. From out in the yard, she could hear Markus mowing some grass with the ancient manual lawn-mower. It always amazed her that children were so willing to push it back and forth. She herself would do anything to get out of it.
‘The kids won’t be here until around five-thirty,’ her mother announced, ‘so you lot can enjoy a little peace and quiet before the tornados arrive.’
Thank God, Louise thought. Her two godchildren really could wreak havoc on a place. She had teased Mikkel and Trine many times, saying that just because there was a lot of space available, that didn’t mean they should raise their kids to use every last inch of it. She meant that in all seriousness, but either they thought she was joking, or they refused to see the problem. Instead, they always got back at her by asking if she and Peter were going to have any children, and the conversation always ground to a halt right there.
Peter had an easier time finding things to talk to Louise’s brother and sister-in-law about. After dinner, he asked with interest how things were going with their house, but by that point Louise had already disappeared into the kitchen to start cleaning up and making coffee. She was so rarely in the mood to listen to her brother and his wife talk about their staid life and big circle of friends, with one social event after another. On the other hand, this never bothered Peter. He took the whole thing in his stride and even remembered whatever they had told him the last time they were together. She smiled at him as he sat there nodding at whatever her sister-in-law was saying. It wasn’t until they stood up to say goodnight two hours later that she realised it had actually ended up being quite a pleasant evening.
