by Sara Blaedel
Louise followed along with interest as Willumsen, whom she was still angry with for forcing her to waste a whole day traipsing out to Nykøbing Sjaelland, unleashed a torrent of profanity. He ignored everyone else in the room, addressing only Suhr.
The murder of the immigrant woman had been officially categorised as ‘solved but not closed’ since they had taken the woman’s ex-husband into custody. Now it turned out that the witness who said she had heard all the noise coming from the victim’s apartment around one o’clock had broken down and confessed that she’d only said that because a reporter was asking her a bunch of questions the same day the body was discovered. The reporter, along with a photographer, had settled into her kitchen; and since they were there, the witness felt under a lot of pressure to make some kind of comment on the appalling tragedy that had happened in the apartment below hers. So she’d made up those comments about the noise. The paper ran with that the next day, and when the police came back to ask why she hadn’t mentioned the noise the first time they talked to her, she was too afraid to admit she had got carried away and made it all up. Her lie had just snowballed out of control.
‘Fucking idiots!’ Willumsen snarled. ‘Now we don’t have shit to hold this guy on.’
Willumsen turned, surveying the officers of the homicide division’s five investigative units, and stormed out of the break room again. Louise wasn’t really sure who the phrase ‘fucking idiots’ referred to – the witnesses or the reporters. She shook off his angry outburst and concentrated on Suhr, who was reviewing what the other units were working on. As he wrapped up the briefing, she got ready to head out to Hvidovre.
‘You’re driving my daughter to her death!’
Accusations were being hurled across the hospital room. Susanne’s mother was on her feet, coming at Louise, before Louise even managed to close the door again.
‘She can’t live like this,’ Susanne’s mother continued. ‘We read it in the paper – there’s a vicious sociopath on the loose. And you’re not doing anything – aside from sitting around drinking coffee in people’s homes! First he came after us, and now he’s gone and murdered some poor young woman …’
Susanne’s mother’s voice was agitated and shrill, but devoid of even the slightest hint of sadness.
Louise looked over at the hospital bed. Susanne was just lying there, the same as the first time Louise had met her. Susanne turned her face toward the door to see who had come in, but avoided looking in her mother’s direction. That sent a twinge through Louise’s heart. The mother’s accusations had the same effect as one of those awful little yappy dogs: it’s all you can do not to kick it in the rump to get it to shut up.
‘I’d like to ask you to step out of the room while I speak to Susanne.’ Louise kept her face calm and spoke with all the official police authority she could.
‘No way,’ the mother fumed. ‘My daughter has suffered enough. I insist on being here to protect her. You’ve certainly demonstrated that you can’t.’ She made a big show of walking over and sitting down on the edge of the bed. Susanne did not acknowledge her mother’s presence.
Again, Louise tried to get the mother to wait outside while she spoke with Susanne. But the mother started getting all worked up; when her accusations eventually reached the point where she was actually blaming the police for her daughter’s suicide attempt, Louise gave up.
‘I’m just going to step out and call my partner, so he can remove you while I do my job,’ Louise calmly announced.
That finally caused the mother’s voice to drop by an octave. ‘Someone has to take care of her,’ she said in a half whimper.
That was the last straw for Louise. She walked over, grabbed hold of the woman’s arm, and escorted her out of the hospital room. Susanne lay there watching her, and Louise thought she saw a little glimmer of amusement deep within those expressionless eyes.
Louise pulled a chair up to the bed and sat in silence for a moment as she searched for the right words, wondering whether she should be more professional or more personable.
‘We’ve got to stop meeting like this,’ she said.
Her words did not elicit any response. Susanne had swallowed a whole jar of painkillers and ten of her mother’s sleeping pills, but then she started vomiting not long after that, so the pills hadn’t had a chance to have any serious effect. Her mother showed up and shook Susanne until she admitted what she had done, and then the mother called an ambulance. Under normal circumstances, a patient like this would probably have already been on her way home again with the number of a therapist in his or her pocket; but because of the recent rape and because Susanne refused to say a thing to the doctors who tried to talk to her, she now had to wait for a psych consult.
‘Would you rather drive over to National Hospital and talk to Jakobsen instead of the psychologist on duty here?’ Louise offered. Louise had no idea if that was even possible, but that didn’t occur to her until the words were already out of her mouth. But it was clear that Susanne had benefitted from talking to Jakobsen before, and she might find it easier to talk some more to him.
‘Yes, please,’ Susanne said, nodding weakly as she turned her head to look at Louise. The bruising was still obvious, although it had faded from purple to a dark yellow, but the swelling had gone down. There was something about her expression that made Louise feel like Susanne was starting to disintegrate. Like Karin Hvenegaard from Rødovre, who had experienced a similar rape two years before. Louise held out her hand and gave Susanne’s arm a little squeeze to reassure her that she wasn’t alone.
‘I’ll just check if he’s in and then I’ll arrange things with the nurses here,’ Louise said. ‘Do you want to tell me why you did it before I go out and make my phone call?’
Silence. Susanne’s eyes were blank again.
Louise waited, then asked, ‘You’re thinking about the girl he killed? Are you afraid he’ll come back?’
‘I didn’t want to die!’ Susanne said. The sentence stood on its own; she didn’t add anything else.
‘Is that why you threw the pills back up again?’ Louise asked.
Susanne finally turned her head and seemed to snap out of it.
‘No, that’s why I took them in the first place!’ Susanne practically screamed.
It was hard to make any sense out of her words.
Susanne lowered her eyes to stare at the blanket, and Louise feared that she was disappearing back into her own world and that the conversation was over.
Then Susanne shook her head and quietly said, ‘I would rather be beaten to death by him than be suffocated by the life I have now.’ Tears flowed noiselessly down her cheeks.
Louise stroked her arm as the full weight of Susanne’s grim admission settled in her chest like a tombstone. Susanne didn’t need to say anything else. Her message had been understood, and it was utterly bleak.
‘Susanne, you don’t need to kill yourself to keep your mother from suffocating you. You can move out and break your ties to her – for a while,’ Louise hurried to add before continuing. ‘Pound your fist on the table and tell her you’re a grown-up and she has to stop butting into your business.’
Louise hoped she hadn’t been too forceful.
‘She teases me for trying to find a man that way.’ Susanne’s words filled the room. ‘I wish I’d died last Monday, because then at least it would have happened with someone other than her.’
There was nothing else to say. Louise sat for a bit, stroking Susanne’s arm. Louise was already plotting how quickly Susanne could move to a new address. Not just to prevent Jesper Bjergholdt from finding her again, but also to get her away from her mother. She’d have to fill Heilmann in on how this all fitted together, and Susanne needed to talk to Jakobsen. If the crisis psychologist wasn’t in his office at the hospital, she would drive Susanne over to his house. She contemplated whether someone ought to talk to the mother and make her aware of her part in all this.
But Louise knew there was no point.
The mother was undoubtedly old-school enough that she wouldn’t listen to anything unless it came from the chief of police himself. Louise predicted Susanne’s mother would spew all her accusations against the police and their inability to protect poor innocent victims who were at a high risk of suicide. Maybe Lieutenant Suhr could put her in her place, Louise thought as she stood up to walk over to the door.
‘Don’t go!’ Susanne pleaded.
Louise turned and smiled reassuringly. ‘I need to talk to a nurse to get permission to take you with me,’ she said.
‘I don’t want her back in here,’ Susanne said.
Louise walked over and pushed the call button on the table next to the bed, and a second later a nurse came through the door. While it was ajar, before it had a chance to swing shut behind the nurse, Louise saw Susanne’s mother stand up, about to follow the nurse in. Louise held up her hand, as if she were a traffic officer motioning for a vehicle to stop, and to her surprise Susanne’s mother sat back down.
‘I would like to bring the patient over to National Hospital to speak to the crisis psychologist she spoke to last week after the rape. Is there any way we can make that happen?’
The nurse looked at Louise in surprise and said there was no reason they couldn’t do that.
Louise smiled and thanked her, relieved that it hadn’t turned out to be a problem that a psych consult had already been ordered here at Hvidovre.
‘You’ll have to take her records with you,’ the nurse said. ‘Susanne was examined last night when she arrived, but we haven’t had a chance to do anything else yet.’
‘Otherwise, the patient would like to rest until we’re ready to go,’ Louise said. ‘That means she doesn’t want any visitors.’
The nurse smiled and said, ‘I’ll just go let her family know that.’
Louise wondered if she ought to take the time to call Heilmann and Jakobsen before she and Susanne left, but decided she could just do that from the car. If Jakobsen didn’t have time, they would have to wait at police headquarters until he had a slot he could fit her into.
‘Do you have any clothes here?’ Louise asked, afraid she was going to have to whisk Susanne away a second time wearing just a hospital gown, but Susanne nodded, pointing over toward the closet. Louise walked over there and saw her clothes hanging neatly on two hangers. She brought them over and laid them on the bed.
‘I’ll wait outside while you get dressed.’
‘I’d rather you stay.’ Susanne’s pleading tone worried Louise. At the moment, Susanne’s voice wasn’t loud enough to reveal her feelings, but Louise guessed that under those words lurked a panicked anxiety about being left alone, lest her mother come back in. Louise walked over to look out the window. Susanne swung her legs over the side of the bed and was getting dressed when the nurse came in and set a copy of her case notes on the bedside table before continuing across the room to Louise.
‘We were planning on discharging Susanne after she spoke to the psychologist, but, as the doctor noted, we planned to schedule a series of counselling sessions. Those could just as easily be conducted at National Hospital if she’s already started a course of treatment there.’ The nurse paused for a bit before lowering her voice and proceeding. ‘It’s my sense that quite a few sessions will be necessary,’ she said, tipping her head slightly toward the door.
Louise nodded, thanked her, and said goodbye before taking Susanne by the arm and preparing to escort her out.
‘I asked your mother to go down to the waiting room,’ the nurse called after them. ‘You can just follow the hallway down to the right. Then I’ll go let her know you’ve left.’
On the way down to the car, Louise took out her phone. She realised she had better fill Heilmann in on developments sooner rather than later. She helped Susanne into the passenger’s seat and shut the door before dialling Heilmann’s extension.
‘It’s such a heartbreaking story. It’s almost unbearable,’ Louise said, briefly summarising how the attempted suicide was motivated by Susanne’s desperation to escape her mother’s need to overprotect, dominate, control and manipulate her life and activities.
‘That’s terrible – if death felt like the only way she could escape. I’ll call Jakobsen and let him know you’re on your way,’ Heilmann said as Louise opened the driver’s side door and climbed in.
‘Thanks,’ Louise said.
‘And if it turns out he isn’t free until later, then come here,’ Heilmann added after a moment’s thought. ‘I’m just about to meet with Suhr to decide how much information we’ll release about the suspect, and about the wording of the warning we’ve prepared.’
Louise heard herself rashly blurt out that it might be a good idea to wait. ‘If we hold off on the warning, I might run into the perp on Friday.’ She regretted it right away – mostly because it sent a shudder through Susanne, who was leaning forward, completely on edge. Louise sensed that her words had sent a tremor through the phone connection back to police headquarters as well.
‘I think you’d better explain what you mean by that,’ Heilmann said.
‘I’d rather not go into the details right now,’ Louise said.
She needed to figure out how she could present the idea so Suhr didn’t think she was deranged and transfer her to arson or something.
‘There’s a social mixer event for one of the big online dating sites this Friday,’ Louise explained, ‘and I think he might decide to attend. It’s just an idea, but you have to get Suhr to wait until we’ve discussed it as an option.’
*
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Lieutenant Suhr grumbled impatiently, holding his hand up in the air to stop her. ‘Camilla Lind already explained the pros and cons. And I think she’s right. We ought to give it a try.’
Louise hid her hands behind her back, pinching her index finger hard to keep herself from fuming. Oh, that Camilla! She promised she wouldn’t say anything. That woman just couldn’t help herself.
‘The question is really whether we dare keep this from the public any longer, now that we’ve got two serious cases on our hands,’ Heilmann said rationally.
Louise still had not quite regained her composure yet. She had just dropped Susanne off with Jakobsen, who had been waiting for them in the doorway to his office, ready. He had put his arm around Susanne in a fatherly way and shepherded her inside. Once he’d got her settled on the comfortable couch, he came back out and let Louise know that he was going to keep Susanne for a while, so Louise didn’t need to wait. They agreed that he would call when Susanne was ready to go.
The whole way over to headquarters, Louise had contemplated how best to pitch Camilla’s idea without revealing that the idea had come from a reporter. She might as well have spared herself the worry.
‘Of course the trouble is that we might not recognise him,’ Suhr said. ‘We saw only a glimpse of him on the CCTV footage, and we didn’t get much from that.’
It caught Louise by surprise that Suhr was evidently taking Camilla’s idea seriously, already envisioning apprehending the guy.
‘True,’ Louise agreed, ‘but I saw enough of him that I’m sure I would recognise his distinctive silhouette and posture if I saw him again. You need—’
Again he gestured with his hand to stop her.
‘We’ll bring the girl,’ Suhr said.
His statement hung in the air until Heilmann and Louise grasped what he meant, and then they both yelled in unison, ‘Absolutely not!’
Louise shook her head and added indignantly, ‘She just tried to commit suicide, Lieutenant.’
‘Not because of him, if I understand correctly,’ Suhr retorted.
Louise stared at him for a moment. He was usually such a considerate person to work with. His tone was far from the gruff style Willumsen had made part of his image. And yet, every once in a while Suhr would make seemingly callous and unfeeling decisions. At the same time, Louise could appreciate why he had made this suggestion.
‘We’ll just nee
d to see what Jakobsen says about that,’ Heilmann cautioned.
‘Maybe we should just skip that and stick to the original plan for the investigation,’ Louise suggested.
‘No, I think we damn well ought to give this a try,’ Suhr argued. ‘There’ll be an ungodly uproar when we go public with the warning, especially since our description of the suspect is so vague. No, we’ll do this social event on Friday. If we don’t get anything out of it, then we’ll go to the public.
‘Sergeant, you update Jakobsen on this and see what he has to say,’ Suhr continued. ‘We’ll have another meeting once you’ve planned out our approach. Take Toft and Stig with you. They could stand to get out a little.’
‘Wasn’t the idea for Lars to go too?’ Louise asked. ‘I mean, at least he’s seen the footage.’
Suhr nodded absentmindedly. He had already mentally moved on to the next thing on his to-do list. Just as Suhr was leaving, Louise asked how things were going on the investigation of the immigrant woman’s murder.
Suhr turned around and glared at her, his lips pursed, but then the muscles in his face relaxed and he shrugged slightly.
‘We haven’t got anywhere. Unfortunately, the guy lucked out and got assigned Jens Bro as his lawyer for his prelim.’
She felt for Suhr and Willumsen. It made all their cases absurdly more difficult when they got stuck with aggressive defence lawyers. She had encountered Bro herself one time when he was representing one of the biggest drug dealers in Danish history, but Bro’s efforts to find evidence exonerating his client had indirectly saved Camilla’s life. Louise didn’t have anything bad to say about him – but it was a fact that you needed to be on top of things and have truly rock-solid evidence when facing him in court.
‘What happened to the woman’s children?’
‘Her sister is taking care of them, which the husband is furious about. He’ll tell anyone who can be bothered to listen that he’s going to be sending the children out of the country soon. He claims the only reason is to ensure their safety and help them regain the peace and balance their mother destroyed when she moved out.’
