by Sara Blaedel
Louise nodded. In another case, she herself had helped examine a section of attic wall they had cut out and hauled into the forensics lab, where a technician put the section of wall into a large, airtight chamber along with fresh superglue in a heated reservoir. She had been amazed at the results: the glue vaporises, and the vapour adheres to any latent fingerprints on the surface of the wall. The prints are then clear and relatively easy to see and photograph.
Louise walked over to the foot of the bed. ‘Is this where you think they fought?’ she asked, turning toward Frandsen.
He nodded, and she studied the narrow space between the bed and the wall.
‘She must have kicked him with her legs together, and if she hit him it would have been with the sides of her arms and palms, or she could also have pushed straight into him with her fists clasped together,’ he said.
‘Flemming found subcutaneous bleeding on her arms, so it seems conceivable that she swung her arms at him or used them to block his blows,’ Louise said.
A wicker laundry basket was tipped over. She guessed that it had been on the right by the foot of the bed opposite the door, and there was a chair in the corner with Christina’s clothes on it.
‘Actually, it’s strange that he didn’t stand things back up again before he left, to make it less obvious that there had been a struggle,’ Frandsen said, puzzled.
Lars joined them.
‘He was very meticulous the first time,’ Louise said. ‘Is there anything in the other rooms?’
She walked into the living room, where a door leading to something that looked like an office was ajar.
‘No, they went right into the bedroom.’
‘She had a pretty high blood alcohol reading. They must have had drinks somewhere,’ Louise informed the others as she walked over to the desk. There was an empty spot where the computer had been. The investigators had been studying the thin layer of dust that covered the top of the desk like a membrane.
‘We thought he might have tried to delete something from her hard drive before he left. But he obviously knew we could probably recover whatever he deleted, because he didn’t go anywhere near her desk – we found only her fingerprints in this area.’
‘Eureka!’ The shout came from the bathroom, and when they got there, one of the forensic guys was sitting on the floor holding a flaccid condom he had fished up out of the toilet’s drainpipe using a pair of thin, curved tweezers.
Louise and Lars stayed back while Frandsen went in and squatted down to study the find.
‘Well, would you look at that?’ Frandsen’s contented statement filled the room with a mood of intense anticipation, which Louise shattered with a question that she could just as easily have waited to ask until they had ridden the wave of progress for a minute.
‘Can the evidence survive sitting in the sewer pipe for almost two days?’
Frandsen got serious again.
‘Even if it takes a month to clean it up, we’ll get a DNA profile out of it,’ he said, still with a confident, victorious air to his voice. ‘But you’re right, it’s harder to get DNA from a sample that’s been kept wet. The forensic pathologists have to cleanse the cells, and they often have to cleanse the impure cells many times before they’re pure enough to get a profile from. But, shit, we will do whatever it takes.’
He moved his pipe back to the corner of his mouth.
Louise’s phone rang, and she stepped away from the group before answering.
The enthusiasm in Heilmann’s voice was infectious. ‘One of Christina Lerche’s girlfriends, who has keys to her apartment, found her yesterday afternoon. She’s coming in here in an hour. Can you come talk to her?’ Heilmann asked.
‘We’re leaving soon,’ Louise replied. ‘I’m in Christina’s apartment now, and the CSI guys just found a used condom in the drain under the toilet. It’s starting to look like we’re getting somewhere.’
Adrenaline coursed through Louise’s bloodstream, and she pushed the faint pangs of hunger that had sneaked up on her in the apartment from her mind as she started mentally running through the interview she was about to conduct.
‘I think the friend might have something interesting to tell us. It appears that Christina Lerche was not particularly tight-lipped when it came to talking about her conquests, so we can hope that she described the suspect to her circle of friends, if she had met him previously,’ Heilmann continued without stopping. ‘It would be great if you and Lars both came back, because I would really like Lars to be there when they go through her computer.’
‘Where’s Stig?’
‘He’s busy with the MTP and won’t be back until Wednesday of next week,’ Heilmann said.
Louise felt her lips purse. It still irked her no end whenever anything reminded her that Michael Stig had been selected for the police department’s Management Training Programme, which meant that he was out of the building about two days a week, and ultimately there was a risk he might one day be her boss. God forbid, she thought. Plus, she knew that Lars had also applied but had been passed over. That had caused some tension in the group, what with Stig gloating and Lars grumbling.
‘I’ll tell Lars,’ Louise said.
She went back into the living room, where her colleague was studying the victim’s CD case.
‘Heilmann wants us back at headquarters. I’m going to do an interview, and you need to be there while they go through the victim’s computer.’
Lars nodded and looked around to solidify the details of the scene in his mind. The apartment was nice, simple, without any knick-knacks and tastefully furnished. The furniture might be from Ikea, but, combined with the lamps and the framed photographs on the wall, it looked fashionable. No piles of stuff, no mess, no throw-blankets draped over the arm of the recliner.
‘What did she do?’ Louise asked as they started toward the front door.
‘Estate agent,’ Lars said. He had flipped through a couple of the folders on the bookshelf in the office. ‘She worked for one of the big agencies north of Frederiksberg on Falkoner Allé.’
Louise went to retrieve her bag and jacket from the victim’s kitchen. Christina’s job didn’t surprise her, because there was quite a bit of truth to the notion that you can learn a lot about a person by looking at their stuff. An air of quality pervaded Christina’s apartment, which gave the impression of a tenant who knew quite a bit about interior decorating. That would make sense for an estate agent.
Louise peeked in on the two CSIs, who were both leaning over the drainpipe under the sink.
‘Good luck, guys. See you later,’ she said and waved.
‘Yup,’ Frandsen said, giving them a farewell salute with two fingers to his temple as she and Lars left.
16
‘I could tell this guy was different from the others. Christina didn’t talk about anything else after her first date with him.’
Marianne With was sitting on the very edge of her chair. Christina Lerche’s friend had twisted up her dark hair and secured it to the top of her head with a clip. She had a nice complexion and wasn’t wearing any make-up. She was thirty-three, just like Christina, and they had worked together for four years.
‘She really enjoyed herself. She was a happy person. I envied her that.’
Marianne seemed to slump, staring off into space and receding into her own thoughts before she continued. ‘But she was also the kind of person you could easily think was sort of overdoing it. She was totally obsessed with online dating. She had profiles on God knows how many different dating sites, and she never made any secret of it. She sometimes went out with several guys in the same week, although she rarely went on more than one or two dates with the same guy. It was as though that first meeting was the only part that interested her. After that she’d toss them aside, discard them, and the next day she’d be at it again with someone new.’
Louise observed the dark-haired woman as she spoke. There was no doubt that Marianne did not approve of her friend’s behav
iour, but at the same time Louise detected a touch of envy in her voice. Christina’s behaviour, at least the way Marianne was describing it, was not unusual, though. A little while back, the division had held a Friday continuing-education meeting where a Swedish lifestyle researcher gave a talk about the increasing number of people who were becoming addicted to online dating.
‘But it wasn’t like that with this guy,’ Marianne continued. The vaguely disapproving tone was gone from her voice. Now she just sounded sincere, and sad. ‘I think he charmed her with his chivalry. The way she told it, she made it sound almost like some heroic deed that he had walked her back to the metro station.’
Marianne slumped again. She sat staring at the floor before straightening up and saying, ‘Sometimes I thought she deserved a good slap on the wrist.’
Her voice started sounding choked up, and Louise braced herself for a bout of sobbing.
‘She would get all irritated whenever a bouquet of flowers would show up at the office from one of her rejects,’ Marianne continued, her voice not breaking after all. ‘She lost interest so fast that the guys totally didn’t get that the relationship was over.’ She paused briefly. ‘I really shouldn’t be talking about her like this,’ she sniffled.
‘What day did they see each other?’ Louise asked, all her senses heightened, ignoring the witness’s self-reproach. Her question was so abrupt that Marianne looked at Louise in confusion.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tell me when Christina went out with him,’ Louise explained. ‘Where did they go, and when did he walk her back to the station?’
‘It must have been Monday or Tuesday.’
‘Do you mean only three or four days went by between when they met for the first time and when he murdered her?’
Louise was champing at the bit, but trying not to push Marianne too hard so she wouldn’t freeze up.
‘It felt like more time had passed,’ Marianne said, ‘but it must have all happened the same week. We were at a training seminar the week before that. And they hadn’t met each other yet then. But she did say she’d been emailing a guy who sounded interesting. I’m quite sure now that it was Monday. They were supposed to get together after work in front of those quaint old pubs along the quay in Nyhavn.’
‘Did they go out to eat?’ Louise urged. ‘Or did they see a movie?’ She searched her memory, trying to think of other things people might do on a first date.
‘Uh-uh,’ Marianne said. ‘That was one of the things Christina thought was so great about him. They just went somewhere and talked, and it seemed like she was impressed to meet a guy who was both well-read and gentlemanly at the same time. She told me about how they had chatted for a couple of hours before he politely asked if he could take her out to dinner on Friday. After she said yes, that was when he walked her back to the metro.’
‘So that was late afternoon or early evening?’ Louise prodded.
Marianne nodded.
Louise wrapped up the interview, thanking Marianne for coming. Then she popped into Heilmann’s office.
‘We have to review the metro’s security footage,’ Louise said before she was even seated in the chair opposite Heilmann’s desk. Then she plopped down and gave Heilmann a quick summary of the interview with Christina’s friend.
‘We’ll start by watching what the CCTV cameras recorded on the platforms at the Kongens Nytorv station, and then if they don’t show up there we can always try the cameras from the escalators leading down to the platforms.’
‘Hell, yeah!’ Heilmann interjected. She didn’t use expressions like that often, but she had been a little less formal ever since she’d returned from her leave of absence.
‘First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll have to ask them to save all the CCTV surveillance footage for us,’ Louise continued excitedly. ‘They keep the recordings for a week, and after that I think they record over them.’
Heilmann nodded.
‘I’ll call the Metro Security office first thing in the morning.’
Louise smiled and sank back in her chair.
‘Now we’ll get him,’ she said and starting humming to herself.
‘Lieutenant Suhr just went home to spend Sunday evening with his family,’ Heilmann said. ‘But he prepped a press release for us to go public with tomorrow morning. We’re asking for witnesses who had contact with a man matching the description of our suspect. And women who experienced the same type of assault but didn’t report it. We’re also warning people about him. It’s just too dangerous not to.’
‘If we find him on the surveillance tapes, we can put out an APB for him with a picture as early as Tuesday,’ Louise said. ‘Actually, I could head over there right now. But do you think anyone would be there at this hour on a Sunday to pull the surveillance footage for me?’
They agreed that it made the most sense to review the tapes on-site, using whatever equipment the metro security people used for that purpose. Otherwise, standard procedure was to copy the surveillance footage to DVDs that they could bring back to police headquarters and review there, but the transfer reduced the image quality.
Heilmann looked at her watch. It was almost seven.
‘I doubt it. It’ll have to be the very first thing we do in the morning. You and Jørgensen can make an appointment with metro security right after the morning briefing.’
Louise went to find her partner. He was sitting with Toft, still working on Christina’s computer.
‘We’re not going to get anywhere else with this until CCU looks at it,’ Toft said. ‘We can tell that they were emailing each other for about fourteen days, but we need to trace the emails he sent her. Our application turns up a number of different ISPs, but we’re not getting anywhere beyond that. Besides, we’ll have to get a warrant before the four service providers will turn over the details on the IP addresses to us. That’ll take a couple of days.’
Toft sounded discouraged.
Louise smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
‘Then it’s a good thing we’ve got another way to track this guy down.’
Toft pushed his reading glasses on top of his head and pulled his eyes away from the computer screen. He could already tell from the tone of her voice that she had something new.
‘What’s up?’ Toft asked. Lars didn’t react. He kept on scanning through the printouts of the emails that Christina and Jesper Bjergholdt had exchanged, and Louise figured he assumed she was referring to the condom they had found at the apartment.
‘Tomorrow we’re going to go pick up a picture of him,’ she told Lars. ‘And you’re coming with me.’
‘“Pick up”?’ Lars and Toft exclaimed in unison.
‘The same day our guy had dinner with Susanne Hansson in Tivoli, he also spent the afternoon with Christina Lerche drinking beer in Nyhavn. And then – wait for it – he walked her back to catch the metro at the Kongens Nytorv station and invited her to go out on Friday. We’re going to look through the station’s surveillance footage for Monday between five and seven PM. Her friend can’t remember what time this all happened, but we know when he was in Tivoli having dinner with Susanne, so it was probably sometime just before that.’
Both men sat listening attentively to what she was saying.
‘It will be interesting to see whether he knew how to evade the cameras. It’s actually not that easy to do,’ Toft said, who was the person in the division with the most camera surveillance experience.
‘Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ Louise said, interrupting him in her sunniest voice. ‘He’s not untouchable; he showed us that in his last attack when he lost control, leaving his fingerprints on the wall and later being stupid enough to flush his used condom down the toilet. He thinks he’s in control, but he slips up now and then.’
They nodded, and she continued, ‘Now at least we’ve got a lead.’
Before heading back to her office to straighten up after her interview with Marianne With, Louise told Lars
and Toft that she was on her way home, so if there was anything else that they needed from her, they should say so now.
‘No, I think we’re all set,’ Toft said. ‘We’re going to drop off the computer now, and then we’ll have to wait and see what the experts can get out of it.’
‘Hello,’ Louise called, opening her front door. She heard voices, and a moment later Markus came running in and gave her a hug. Camilla and Peter were sitting in the kitchen sharing a bottle of red wine. Their empty plates had already been cleared and were sitting on the counter, along with a pan. A large unwashed skillet was soaking in the sink.
‘Well, bon appétit!’ Louise muttered under her breath. She quickly glanced around at the mess and suddenly felt tired. She went to the bathroom to freshen up a little. The autopsy, crime-scene inspection and witness interview had all taken their toll.
‘Have you eaten?’ Peter called from the kitchen.
She had grabbed a piece of crispbread out of her desk drawer before Christina Lerche’s friend arrived, but otherwise she hadn’t had any real food since leaving her parents’ house that morning.
‘Nope. Is there anything left?’
She walked over and peered down into the pan. In the bottom were a couple of uneaten boiled new potatoes. She grabbed a couple of slices of rye bread, buttered them heavily, cut the potatoes into slices, and seasoned everything with sea salt.
‘Wine?’ Peter offered. He was having a hard time hiding his irritation at their weekend having been cut short, but he was making an honest effort.
Louise shook her head to say ‘no, thanks’ and stepped out onto the landing of the back stairs to grab one of the lukewarm cans of beer they kept out there. Only after she opened it did she realise that Camilla had been watching her without saying anything. She hadn’t even stood up to give her a hug hello. It gave her the creepy feeling that they had been sitting there talking about her and that maybe Peter was venting. She really just wanted to take her food into the living room and plop down in front of the TV, but that would not go over well and would probably be a little too antisocial, she thought.
