by Sara Blaedel
Louise’s fingers tensed around the steering wheel. It was her fault Bjergholdt had got away. She should have stopped him from leaving the party before he had a chance to slip out. Self-recrimination filled her head. How stupid she’d been to rely on her mobile phone in the warehouse when she knew there was a risk they wouldn’t have any reception. She could have left Susanne standing there and hurried over to the exit instead of taking the time to bring Susanne along.
Fuck, she thought, hitting the steering wheel, snapping Susanne out of her reverie. Louise tried to pull herself together, but her composure was crumbling. To her surprise, she longed to snuggle up against Peter, and that pissed her off even more because it forced her to admit she needed him on such a visceral level. Suddenly the emptiness started feeding on itself: she had nothing to go home to, no one to comfort her the next morning and tell her she’d done the right thing. Even though he, of all people, had no fucking idea what the right thing to do even was. It always used to help her feel better, not feel so exposed when she showed up at the morning briefing.
‘We’re almost there,’ she announced into the dark car.
Lyshøj Allé was just off Toftegård Square. Louise parked in the middle of the narrow street and turned around to look at Susanne.
‘Do you feel safe sleeping here alone?’ Louise asked, with no clue what she would do if Susanne said no.
Luckily Susanne nodded and, in an even more convincing voice, said she was looking forward to being by herself.
‘If you feel unsafe for any reason whatsoever, call the number we gave you. It’s the direct line to police headquarters dispatch. They’ll send a car over right away.’
Lieutenant Suhr had arranged for dispatch to keep an eye on Susanne’s apartment until she moved to her new address after the weekend.
Susanne didn’t seem to be listening. She had got out of the car and was just standing there fidgeting, waiting for permission to go in. And Louise couldn’t blame her. It was four-thirty in the morning and she’d just been discharged from the hospital. There was no question that she needed to go to bed and get some rest.
Louise waved at her and put the car in gear, then decided to head home instead of returning the car to the garage. She could drop it back off Saturday morning. She was sure the others were back at headquarters, rounding off the day with a debriefing, but they’d just have to make do without her.
23
‘So we’ll go public and look for other young women he’s victimised in the past.’
Suhr’s voice rumbled through the break room during Monday’s morning briefing. Louise felt like she’d lost her grip. She’d woken up Saturday morning feeling extremely ill, and she had thrown up numerous times over the next few hours. In the end, she swallowed her pride and called Camilla, even though she knew Henning was probably there and that she would be interrupting their Saturday plans. But Louise just couldn’t bring herself to call her mother.
She hadn’t told her parents much about the break-up. They knew there’d been a fight, but they didn’t know what to make of Peter moving out of the apartment, and Louise still didn’t feel ready to explain it.
Camilla came over Saturday afternoon and sat with Louise on the sofa as she poured out her grief and despair. Louise was astonished at how easily she cried, but stubbornly insisted she wasn’t crying about Peter.
‘Are you lonely?’ Camilla asked cautiously, getting up to put in the Big Fat Snake CD she had brought over. Camilla firmly believed that their music helped everything.
Louise shook her head firmly and then closed her eyes, carried away by Anders Blichfeldt’s amazing voice. When she eventually opened them again, she reassured Camilla that she had actually been longing for a little solitude.
‘I just feel like I’ve become so fragile inside. Like I might shatter if I get hit by a stone.’ That was the best way Louise could explain how little was left of her strength, which she’d always taken for granted.
Camilla was tactful enough not to bring work up while Louise was so upset, but questions about the previous night’s singles event were looming behind her comforting words and nurturing tone. Camilla stayed until late afternoon, when she and Henning planned to drive out to his place in Sorø and spend Saturday night there. Markus was staying with his father.
The tears and the nausea had abated by the time Louise waved goodbye to Camilla from the stairs. Louise accepted that she had to live with her body’s way of working through the break-up, but she set Sunday night as her deadline for getting over it. She thankfully still had one more day to wallow in self-pity, she thought to herself, as she watched Camilla get into her car and drive away.
‘Now we’re closing in on him, and we won’t back down until we’ve got him,’ Suhr bellowed on, yanking Louise’s attention back to the morning briefing.
Her colleagues did not pile the blame on her when she showed up for the briefing as she had feared they would. When she woke up, a few minutes before the alarm went off, she inhaled all the way down to her gut and decided that, from this moment on, her life would continue as it had before – just without Peter. Sadness, loneliness and a broken heart were feelings she could have; they just couldn’t be all. Then she got up and thought she was doing better. She managed to sound almost natural when Michael Stig – the only one who had done so – passed her in the hallway and asked her how the hell she could let Bjergholdt escape into thin air when it had been her job to keep that from happening.
‘He got out,’ Louise said in a steady tone and walked off to the briefing.
‘We’ll show the CCTV footage from the metro station if we have to, but we’ll start without it,’ Suhr said.
‘Maybe I should check if Duke’s profile is still up,’ Louise suggested, interrupting the lieutenant. ‘He doesn’t know we’re on to that name,’ she continued.
Suhr grumbled a little as he considered that, but finally nodded and then pointed at Heilmann. ‘We’re going to meet after this,’ he said, nodding at Louise to indicate that she would attend as well.
Louise was already sitting at her computer searching when Suhr knocked on the wall next to the open door to her office. Lars had gone to get coffee, so Suhr sat down in his chair.
‘So, what are you going to do if you find his profile still up?’ Suhr asked. He had mentioned before that Louise should be bait for the perp. Now a deep wrinkle formed above his nose as he awaited her answer.
Louise mulled it over for a moment. What did she plan to do, actually? They couldn’t trace him just from his profile information. If they really lucked out, he might have posted a picture, and then they’d at least have something to take to the public. If not …
‘Email him,’ she responded. ‘Then maybe we can trace him.’
Lieutenant Suhr sat staring out the open door to the corridor. Louise assumed he was keeping his eye out for Heilmann, and knew he would feel better if Heilmann agreed that it was a good idea for Louise to contact their man.
‘Although I haven’t found him so far,’ Louise added, to Suhr’s relief. ‘I need to get hold of Stine Mogensen and ask how she was writing to him, because he isn’t listed on any of the online dating sites I’ve checked.’
Just then they heard rapid footsteps. Heilmann turned the corner without stopping and was suddenly standing in the middle of the office with agitated red splotches on her cheeks.
‘He was at Susanne’s apartment!’
Heilmann had already sent a patrol car out to Susanne’s address, and she asked Louise and Lars to follow it out there.
Susanne had been in her apartment since Louise dropped her off early Saturday morning. She hadn’t stepped outside all weekend and hadn’t had any contact with anyone – not even her mother. Monday morning, she stepped out to buy a few groceries, and when she came home half an hour later, she found an envelope that he’d slipped through her letter box while she was out.
‘Essentially he wrote that he had been thinking about her a lot,’ Heilmann said.
/> ‘A threat?’ Suhr asked.
Heilmann shrugged. ‘That’s sure how I’d take it,’ she said, ‘but we’ve seen how erratically he acts. It’s hard to say whether he’s dissociative or a sociopath. But we need to get her out of that apartment right away.’ She looked at Louise. ‘I ran into Lars out in the corridor. He’s waiting for you. Make it clear to Susanne that she’s not under house arrest or anything. She’s free to come and go, both down there and in the city, but she shouldn’t go around broadcasting her new address.’
Louise nodded, already on her feet. The apartment Jakobsen had lined up was on the outskirts of Roskilde, about half an hour west of Copenhagen. Heilmann leaned over Louise’s desk and wrote the address on a notepad. Suhr asked them to call in when they’d got Susanne set up in her temporary residence.
Louise powered down her computer and decided she’d stay out in the field the rest of the day. She had tried breaking the case by scanning through men’s profiles several times and was a little irritated that that approach wasn’t panning out yet. She kept hitting dead ends and having to start over again with broader and broader search terms. At the same time, another thought had started percolating in the back of her head: maybe they could leverage the fact that Stine Mogensen had been in touch with Jesper Bjergholdt. But now that would have to wait, too, because once again something else had come up that took priority.
Susanne had a suitcase and a weekend bag packed and ready by her front door. She and Heilmann had agreed that Susanne would label the other things she wanted brought to her new place, and the police would have someone come and move them later in the day, but since the new place was fully furnished she mostly just needed clothes.
Louise felt bad for her. This whole thing might be over by the end of the week, but it might also take months. After the morning briefing, Heilmann explained that the woman Jakobsen had borrowed the place from was out of the country, so Susanne could stay there for at least four months if need be. Jakobsen felt that, whether or not Bjergholdt was apprehended, Susanne could use some peace and quiet and the space to find herself. He advised her to give up her own apartment and find a different permanent place to live where she wouldn’t be so close to her mother any more. That was a significant step in her treatment, which was well underway.
Louise sensed that Jakobsen was concentrating more on the profound impacts and scars that Susanne’s mother had inflicted on her daughter than on the superficial wounds and scrapes that had come from the rape itself, even though those were also serious on a different level.
‘When can I get my computer back?’ Susanne asked as they carried her bags down to the car, where Lars took them and put them in the trunk.
‘You should probably plan on being without it for a little while. It’s been submitted into evidence,’ Louise advised.
‘Well, is there any way I could borrow another one in the meantime?’
‘I don’t know,’ Louise answered, holding the car door for her.
She couldn’t figure Susanne out. She didn’t seem particularly bothered by the message Bjergholdt had slipped in her mail slot. At least Louise couldn’t really see any signs of anything resembling fear. Perhaps that could be ascribed to the freedom Susanne felt at escaping the overbearing clutches of her mother.
‘What do you need a computer for right now?’ Louise asked once they were seated in the car.
Susanne was on a long-term leave of absence from work while she underwent counselling with Jakobsen.
‘Not for dating,’ Susanne said. ‘Just for everyday things.’
Louise didn’t respond, but decided that she would call Jakobsen to ask if there was any risk that Susanne might decide to get in touch with Bjergholdt if she had that option. She took some comfort from knowing that Susanne would have just as much trouble finding him as the police did.
‘I want to try to find a new job and another apartment,’ Susanne said. ‘I don’t want to go back to Valby.’
Lars looked like he was about to say something, but stopped himself.
‘First, you should get some distance from all of this,’ Louise said, wishing she didn’t sound so much like a self-help book. Susanne had a good point: Louise would have wanted the same thing.
As they drove into Roskilde, after a long silence Susanne casually mentioned that she had agreed to tell her story to a reporter from Morgenavisen.
Louise sighed deeply and hoped that Lars would say something this time, but he kept his eyes trained on the road as they exited the carriageway and drove through Røde Port, an industrial zone being redeveloped as a residential and commercial area.
‘That’s your decision, but don’t invite any reporters down here. If an article mentions where you’re living, it will undermine the whole purpose of moving you here. Agree to meet the reporter only back in Copenhagen,’ Louise suggested, feeling suddenly exhausted. She had such good advice for how other people should live their lives, but when people didn’t listen to her, she would get irritated and shrug them off as stupid.
‘You do whatever you want in terms of this newspaper interview,’ Louise said, smiling at Susanne, ‘but make sure you get to read it before they print it.’
Susanne obviously didn’t grasp why that was important. She apparently has no idea that that’s the only way to guarantee they don’t fuck up her story, Louise thought.
Susanne’s new apartment was on the ground floor of a two-storey building surrounded by a landscape of paths that ran through a whole little development of similar-looking yellow buildings. It had two rooms, lots of natural light and a little deck out back. Susanne entered cautiously, as though she was afraid of scratching the light birch flooring. She walked to the centre of the room and inspected her temporary home.
‘This is nice,’ was her first comment, and her smile reached all the way up into her eyes.
It wasn’t until Susanne was in the kitchen that it hit Louise how utterly awful the woman’s life must have been. Susanne Hansson was actually starting to flourish, Louise thought, lost in her own thoughts as she watched her, despite what she’d just been through – and had put herself though.
‘I hope you’ll settle in all right – even though it’s just temporary,’ Louise said, and left her to it.
Louise spent the next two days on various online dating sites, trawling through the profiles for all the dark-haired men who were about thirty. She even visited sites specifically intended to help farmers find girlfriends, and BeautifulPeople.dk, a site ostensibly for especially attractive Danes. She poked around through men who were searching for their soulmates.
Stine Mogensen and Duke had met each other on Dating.dk, and Toft had already been in touch with the people who ran the site, who had quickly reported back that the profile he was looking for had been deleted. It had been set up by a user with a Hotmail address, so there was no reason to assume the name, address or phone number would be correct, but they were checking anyway. But they also determined that the profile name ‘Duke’ was already in use again, this time by a twenty-year-old guy with shoulder-length blond hair, if you could believe his profile photo. Just to be sure, they checked him out and verified that he was the person he claimed to be.
Louise called Stine and explained that she had no idea how to go about chatting with someone on a dating site. She asked Stine to try to find Duke again, even though he might be using a different login name.
‘I don’t think he’s there any more,’ Stine said. ‘I haven’t talked to him for a couple of weeks.’
Stine had been very stand-offish at first, not wanting to push Duke into the arms of the police. It wasn’t until Louise explained she was investigating the murderer/rapist all the newspapers were talking about that she agreed to help, rather shaken.
‘If you find him online, call me the second you’re sure it’s him,’ Louise said, adding that obviously this was something that should just stay between them.
‘Don’t tell Annette or any of your other friends that you’re
helping me with this,’ she said sternly.
Louise was astonished how many different online dating sites there were. She hardly knew where to start. With Mr Noble and Duke in mind, she paid particular attention to profile names that had anything to do with nobility or aristocracy, and she sat bolt upright in her chair when she stumbled across ‘The_Count’, who according to his profile was a twenty-eight-year-old blond man.
Louise wrote and asked him to send a picture, explaining that she wanted to see who she was writing to, and very shortly a photo appeared in the inbox at her new Hotmail address, which Lars had set up precisely for this purpose.
The_Count was soon ruled out, as were RedBaron and King, but each time she felt that rush and a wave of hope rising, and then fading again just as quickly when the incredible variety of photos appeared in her inbox.
Now she understood better why a number of girls had given up and stopped writing to Bjergholdt. Apparently it was quite common for people to just send their pictures. This caused some trouble for Louise as she tried to figure out how she could avoid sending her own picture. She ended up resorting to the most pathetic excuse of them all: Sorry, I just don’t think we’re right for each other, she would write whenever the guy she was emailing sent her his picture.
She felt bad and wondered if it would be fairer if she briefly explained that she was a police officer searching for a specific individual, but that didn’t seem feasible either, she thought. You never knew. They might decide to go into a chat room and tell everyone there was a cop fishing around online. Weirdly, so far no one had asked her to send her photo first; she always brought it up first.
Suhr had been buzzing around the corridors since Tuesday morning when his ‘wanted’ announcement about Bjergholdt appeared in all the big newspapers. He had decided to withhold the still from the metro CCTV footage. ‘That’s the card we still have up our sleeve,’ he commented at Tuesday’s morning briefing.
A number of calls had come in that same morning from frightened women who said they had been in contact with him but had never met him in person.
