by Sara Blaedel
He was with three girls, showing off for the photographer. He was standing on the far left, talking to someone who wasn’t in the picture. His aristocratic profile stood in sharp contrast to pretty much everything else in the picture.
She clicked on the picture and zoomed in so it took up the whole screen. She scrolled down over the photo and clicked the text box underneath. Not that she expected his name to be there, more because she was just on autopilot.
Prinzz.
He was calling himself ‘Prinzz’ now. She sat for a long time, staring, without being able to remember the three girls’ names. She saw only his name with those two Zs and wondered if it could belong to someone else. But there wasn’t anyone else in the picture. Just the four of them.
She shivered a little as she went back to the start page and typed ‘Prinzz’ in the site’s search box. She couldn’t tell if it was her hangover still wreaking havoc on her body, or if it was agitation knowing he had been hanging out in the same part of town where she had been. She could have run into him. They actually could have been in the same place without her having realised it. She hit ENTER and found his profile. The album under his profile name was empty, but the profile did have a ‘Send Prinzz a Message’ link. Louise sat there staring for a long time, and then her fingers starting moving on the keyboard.
I saw you last night, but you weren’t alone so I didn’t want to bother you. Is there a place you usually go?
Louise tried to imagine what Susanne would have written if it were her. Brief and not too self-confident at any rate. She signed it ‘TRIM’ and pressed SEND, but regretted it right away. She should have thought it through in a state when her mental capacity was not diminished by a hangover. She wanted to arouse his curiosity, not set off warning bells.
Shit, she thought, cursing that she couldn’t get the message back.
She was still sitting there, trying to collect her thoughts, a moment later when an icon blinked to tell her she had a message in her Nightwatch inbox.
Sometimes, he wrote succinctly.
Dumbfounded, she sat there staring. She had established contact, but it had almost been too easy. Again she suspected that she had the wrong guy. Maybe this wasn’t even the guy who called himself ‘Prinzz’. She was still so tired. Although her headache had abated, she was still thinking slowly, and she wasn’t with it enough to come up with a plausible excuse to back out now and wait to re-establish contact once she was feeling better.
Another message from him: Have I seen you?
No, I don’t think so, she replied, starting to sweat. You were surrounded by girls, so I totally don’t blame you for not noticing me.
It would be dumb to break off contact, she now realised, since he was writing to her. If it turned out it really was him, she had to hold on, tooth and nail. She led the conversation to a neutral topic.
Do you go out often? she wrote.
It depends. What about you?
No, not so much. I was just out with an old friend from school.
Old? How old are you?
She stopped to consider. Both Susanne and Christina Lerche were in their early thirties. It would be too much of a leap if she was much older.
Thirty-three, she lied, adding that she hoped that wasn’t off-putting.
Not at all. Do you have kids?
Yes or no, she wondered quickly. No, no kids to tuck into bed before dinner, she concluded.
No, I haven’t found the right guy yet, she wrote and then scolded herself silently: shut up, quick, this is too risky.
Or maybe he hasn’t found you yet, was the speedy response.
Good answer, she wrote.
Phew, she thought, noticing that her forehead was damp with sweat.
What’s your name? he wrote, not acknowledging her compliment.
Now the sweat really started flowing. She wiped her brow with her sleeve and rubbed her temples. Then she quickly typed: Call me Princess.
Louise jumped up all of a sudden and stepped back from the computer, unable to fathom the consequences of what she had got mixed up in. She went to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face. At the same time, a feeling that she was on to something was bubbling inside her. Her exhaustion was easing, along with the last traces of her hangover. A wave of empowerment rolled up through her body. They had established contact. Now she just had to act sensibly.
She ought to contact Suhr or Heilmann so one of them could help decide how they should proceed. On the other hand, if she waited too long now, she risked his breaking off contact. He hadn’t asked where she had seen him in town yet. Maybe he figured she’d seen him the night before. Or maybe people just took it for granted that people were checking the photos on Nightwatch because they knew it let you track down people you had seen around the bars.
She dried off her face and went back.
Do you want to get coffee? he had written while she was away.
She ran to the front hall to grab her phone from her purse. She quickly found Heilmann’s mobile number and called. It rang for a long time before it went to voicemail. Louise tried her home number, but there was no answer there either. She heard a sound from her computer and knew she had received a new message. She left a message on Heilmann’s answering machine, asking her to call back.
‘Fuck,’ she said out loud as she hung up. It could be a long time before Heilmann called back, and she couldn’t wait to respond to Prinzz. Irritated, she tried Suhr, who picked up after the second ring, but when she heard his voice, she could tell from his stand-offish tone that she was interrupting something. She hung up, secretly rejoicing that her phone number wouldn’t show up on his caller ID. What the hell would he have told her to do, anyway? They could run a trace on her computer on Monday if they thought that would give them anything new.
Again she felt unsure if it really was Bjergholdt she had contacted. A man with so much on his conscience wouldn’t be behaving so recklessly, right? The words were all muddled in her head, and she wouldn’t have been able to explain to Suhr that she was sitting at her computer writing to someone who might not even be their suspect. She needed to be a little more sure.
That sounds nice, she replied. Then she hit RETURN twice and continued, I’m going out of town this weekend visiting my parents, but I’ll be back Monday so maybe we can set something up when I get back?
She sat there with a nervous knot in her stomach, waiting to see how he would react.
It took longer than before for him to respond. She wondered if she shouldn’t have nailed down a specific time and was just about to write that they could decide on a time now when she received his response.
Sounds good, he wrote. What’s your real email address? I’ll send you a line Monday. Take care of yourself, Princess.
She sank, struggling to think clearly. The Hotmail account she had been using at work was just her initials, but that didn’t go with TRIM at all. She felt like she’d been caught in a lie, and held her face in her hands, struggling to try to think coherently. Finally she gave up and wrote her Hotmail address, praying that he wouldn’t get cold feet and ask her what TRIM, LR, and Princess had in common. But he just replied See you soon, a second after she pressed SEND.
So, she had done it. They had a date to email each other on Monday. Suddenly she felt hungry. Like a force of nature, she felt her body suddenly crying out for food. She went and opened her fridge, even though she knew there was nothing in it that would help her. Without even trying to fight her craving for a burger and a big container of fries, she shoved her feet into a pair of galoshes and headed down to the street to get some takeout, replaying the exchange of messages in her head.
Had she written anything that could arouse his suspicion? Had she in any way said anything that didn’t come across as natural? It also occurred to her that in her eagerness to tone things down, she might have come across as uninteresting. Maybe he’d lose interest before Monday.
Her thoughts were racing, spinning into an enorm
ous mishmash by the time she got back to her apartment. She had ordered two cheeseburgers with extra bacon, even though there was almost no way she could eat more than one of them, but she felt like indulging. Feeling that her appearance screamed to all and sundry she’d been out most of the night – and wasn’t particularly good at such things – she let herself back in through her building’s main door holding a Jolly Cola and looked forward to collapsing.
26
‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You’ve been writing from your home computer after we set up a whole special work one just for that purpose?’
Michael Stig was leaning over Louise’s desk sounding like a broken record. This was the fourth time he had repeated himself, although his actual word choice had changed slightly, and Louise was already fully aware that it might not have been the smartest decision. But she also knew that a civilian couldn’t trace things the way the police could, so she didn’t quite grasp why it was apparently such a huge disaster.
‘Well, first of all, we should have blocked your IP address,’ Stig said at the investigative team’s morning briefing.
The others listened with interest as Louise told them about Nightwatch, and Heilmann commended her for establishing contact when she had the chance. Even Suhr seemed impressed, although Louise had pointed out several times there was no way to even be sure she had contacted the right guy. She also explained the project she had Stine Mogensen working on, which was ultimately their best shot at contacting the suspect.
‘Mogensen left the mixer with Bjergholdt that night,’ Louise reminded everyone present. ‘Last week I asked her to search for him whenever she was chatting online. They have chatted with each other before, so I thought maybe there was something distinctive about the way he expressed himself that she might recognise even if he were using a new profile name. But she hasn’t found anything yet. So maybe this Prinzz is just a wild-goose chase.’
Louise said that mostly to tamp down their expectations a little.
Stig sat there shaking his head through the rest of the briefing, and Louise wished he would just go back to focusing on his fucking management training programme. Finally she couldn’t take it any more. ‘Would you give it a fucking rest!’ she snapped.
She struggled with her rage and looked away when he started defensively scolding her again for using her home computer. He was making a big deal out of nothing to make it seem like her actions had been irresponsible and reckless. Which they had, she was fully aware of that. But that didn’t give him carte blanche to keep harping on it.
Suhr was standing in the doorway observing the drama without any change in his expression. It took a minute before Stig noticed him, gave everyone a quick nod, and left the room.
‘Just keep going,’ Suhr said, ignoring the conversation he’d walked in on. ‘It won’t be of real interest to us until we know for sure if it’s him, of course. But don’t be inviting him over to your place unless we’re there.’
Louise smiled at him and promised to be careful.
‘The attacks we’ve seen from him so far aren’t the kinds of things you get away with out in the open, so you just keep at it,’ Suhr encouraged.
She was glad that the lieutenant was being so low-key about the whole thing. There was still a long way to go, she thought, and she was sure Bjergholdt wouldn’t even consider inviting her out to dinner until he was sure she was the type he was looking for. Which he couldn’t know until they met in person. And she wouldn’t be sure it was actually him until they met in person, either. Suhr’s secretary interrupted them by coming in to let him know he had a visitor on his way up.
Louise looked at him askance, and Suhr smiled pessimistically and shrugged. ‘It’s Susanne’s mother,’ he said. ‘She’s here to shout at me because I haven’t found her daughter’s rapist yet. Plus now she’s pissed off that we moved her daughter so she can’t get in touch with her.’
‘When is someone going to talk to her, really talk to her,’ Louise asked, ‘and explain the situation and tell her that she is the reason Susanne doesn’t want to have any contact for a while?’
Louise actually thought Jakobsen had already done that, but the woman obviously hadn’t clued in.
‘Now,’ Suhr said, an anguished look on his face.
Unbelievable what all falls under the job description of a homicide division lieutenant, Louise thought, watching him leave. She secretly wished a curse on Stig that on the very day he was promoted to lieutenant, if that ever happened, he would be inundated with stupid tasks like this.
‘I’ll be in a little late tomorrow,’ Louise said when she ran into Heilmann in the hallway late that afternoon outside Suhr’s office. She briefly mentioned that she had a doctor’s appointment but didn’t provide any further details, and the sergeant was tactful enough not to ask.
Louise wasn’t very hungry as she biked home, and decided she would just make do with a couple of open sandwiches for dinner so she wouldn’t have to stop and pick up any food. The whole way up to the fifth floor, she walked with her eyes trained on the steps in front of her and was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she almost crashed right into the person sitting on the landing outside her door.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she asked, looking at Peter in surprise – but she already knew.
His overnight bag was sitting in front of the door. He nodded at it and shrugged.
Her insides went cold, and an image of Susanne and her mother flashed through her mind. If Peter wanted to move back in, Louise wanted to move to an unlisted address, too. She realised right away how childish that thought was. She stepped past him and unlocked the door.
‘Come in,’ she said.
Her thoughts were in disarray. She had completely pushed the instinctive reaction she had on Saturday out of her mind, but now he was standing here and she had no doubt as to why.
‘Didn’t it work out?’ she asked, heading into the kitchen to put the kettle on.
The atmosphere was awkward, and it was unreasonable of him not to start talking. But instead, Peter was leaving it up to her to break the ice and get the conversation going.
‘I don’t know,’ he finally said. ‘I think I need to really think things through.’
The irritation hit her again. He hadn’t even apologised about showing up unannounced, nor had he asked if this was a good time. And, actually, his timing sucked. She needed to go see if Prinzz had emailed. She’d been checking her Hotmail account from her laptop, but there hadn’t been anything. She noticed she was feeling more and more nervous that Prinzz would back out at the last minute, and she had the weird sense she could force him to email her by sitting at her computer and staring at her screen. This had been on her mind all day, and her mind was going a mile a minute. She didn’t have any brain cells left to devote to thinking about Peter’s problems.
‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked in a tone of voice that made it sound like his badminton game had been cancelled.
‘I miss you,’ he said.
Louise turned her back to him, wishing he would stop. ‘You can’t just move back in,’ she said, surprised that the idea had even occurred to him.
‘I know that. I’m going to stay with Lars.’
Louise couldn’t think of anything to say, but was glad that at least he realised it would be better for him to sleep on a mattress at his buddy’s place than to even consider sleeping on the couch at hers.
‘I just wanted to let you know that,’ Peter said.
‘Thanks,’ she replied, a little sarcastically. She shrugged. ‘I guess.’
She walked him to the door and stood there, watching him descend the stairs with his overnight bag over his shoulder. Her head was about to explode. She shut the door and stood there, lost in thought.
When Louise logged in a little later to check if there was anything in her inbox, she found that Prinzz had suggested: We could get coffee at Tivoli tomorrow, if you want.
Of course, she thought
. He knows how easy it is to hide in the crowds at the popular old amusement park.
Camilla called and said she would drop by for a second and then hung up before Louise could tell her it wasn’t a good time. Louise quickly emailed Prinzz back to ask where and when to meet.
Café Viften, four o’clock, he replied succinctly, and then: (You know what I look like.)
Cool, she wrote with no idea where Café Viften was. She sat there drumming her fingers for a bit. She sensed restraint in the tone of his brief message and wanted to keep the dialogue going to reassure herself that he wasn’t thinking of backing out. Instead, she logged out of her mailbox and went to the kitchen to make herself a ham sandwich. She had just sat down to skim today’s Urban when Camilla buzzed up from downstairs.
Louise was guessing that Peter had called her and that’s why she’d insisted on stopping by.
‘Hi, I’m a little busy so I can’t stay long,’ Camilla said when Louise opened the door for her.
Louise smiled, shaking her head. She wasn’t the one pressuring her friend to squeeze a visit into her busy schedule.
Camilla sat down at the kitchen table, hunching over a bit.
‘So what the fuck is up with Peter?’ she asked, eyeing Louise as though she expected an explanation. They briefly discussed the fact that there was pretty much no chance in hell Louise was going to take him back, and Louise found it comforting that Camilla was tepid in her support of Peter as well. Camilla listened to what Louise had to say, and disagreed only halfheartedly when Louise said the trust was broken and it was no use them trying again.
When they ran out of things to say on that topic, Camilla pulled a handful of pictures out of her purse and spread them out on the kitchen table as she eagerly described Henning’s idyllic farmhouse. There were also some pictures of Camilla and Henning holding hands.
Louise noticed again how attractive he was. Not flashy, but tall and dark-haired. Exactly Camilla’s taste.
