The Woman in the Hotel

by Sara Blaedel

  “Maybe you should have thought about that a couple of days ago!”

  Camilla got up and went into the hallway. So her stepmom didn’t think she was up for it! That she might run the paper into the ground. The gauntlet had been thrown. Camilla turned around in the doorway.

  “Selling won’t be an issue before Dad is discharged. And don’t worry about seeing your daughter in the paper. I’m taking that story off and continuing my dad’s series of articles. It’s going on the front page—time to increase sales!” Having said her piece, she stalked down the garden path without saying good-bye.

  4

  Camilla printed a second as well as a third edition of SkagensPosten. The front-page story about the many Norwegian investors and the Danish straw men clandestinely buying up the famed yellow houses of Skagen had attracted serious attention. She’d just had a visit from TV2 Nord, who wanted a comment on the exposé. It wasn’t hard to sense that H.C. didn’t care for all the attention the matter was attracting, now that the big media was quoting the little weekly.

  “After the assault on your father and the fire, maybe we should keep a low profile,” he had said earlier that morning.

  She glanced at the anonymous letter she had found on the garden path the other night, coming home from Anders’s. It was still on the desk, but she hadn’t had the energy to open it.

  “I’ll not be intimidated and nobody’s going to fucking control what we print in our paper!” It came out more aggressively than she had intended, and Camilla realized that her defensiveness only served to cover up her own feeling of unease. Because, of course, she was skating on increasingly thin ice.

  “Michael has arranged for some guy to come by later in the day to install a couple of surveillance cameras, so if anybody tries to break into the paper again, at least we can see who they are. Two more will be put up outside.”

  Only later did it dawn on her that maybe H.C. was worried about his own safety. But she took it as a given that the attackers would go after her if they made another attempt.

  Progress was slow at the neurosurgical ward in Aalborg, where her father was still hospitalized. It had been three weeks since he’d been assaulted in the editorial office. He was no longer drifting in and out of consciousness, but the skull fracture he had suffered was so serious that the doctors insisted that he stay put.

  The police were still looking for the culprits, and the results from the crime scene analysis showed that the same people could have been behind both crimes. The clues still pointed to the two young people who had been seen leaving SkagensPosten’s parking lot and also seen later at the campsite. But the two suspects had an easy time hiding out in the throng of tourists. Her dad had barely reacted when she told him about the fire, but she had felt a squeeze in her hand when she said that she was continuing to run the articles.

  * * *

  Camilla forced herself to stop thinking about her dad. She got up and grabbed her bag. She had allowed herself to plan lunch at Jakob’s with her old friend, Annette, who had called her earlier that morning and said that they had something to celebrate. It was a long time since they had seen each other. Annette’s mother had been seriously ill with cancer for a long time, and her daughter had spent most of her time taking care of her. She had been to Germany several times, where her mother had received treatment after the Danish health care system gave up.

  Since their first day in school, she and Annette had been inseparable. Until the day when teenaged Camilla had moved to Roskilde to live with her mom. However, they had managed to stay quite close friends despite the distance, even when Annette moved away from Skagen shortly after Camilla left.

  Every summer, Annette moved back home and lived in her large summer cabin with a view of the sea in Gammel Skagen. Her mom, Hanne, and Camilla’s stepmom had gone to school together and still saw each other several times a week, even after Hanne had become ill.

  * * *

  The head on Camilla’s draft beer was high after they had ordered.

  “She’s finally been declared free of cancer,” Annette exclaimed with a big smile. “Of course, you can never know for sure, but the results of the last tests just came in, and there are no signs of cancer left.”

  Annette batted her eyelids a couple of times as if to hold back the tears before they made a toast to Hanne, who had worked hard her whole life to create a good and safe life for her daughter. Annette’s father had been a fisherman but had gone missing at sea when she was a small girl. She was an only child, and Annette had often talked about how her mother had completely set her own needs aside in order to provide her daughter with a good childhood.

  Camilla suspected her friend of feeling that her mother had nearly worked herself to death in the attempt to make ends meet as the sole provider, and Annette never disguised the fact that she blamed her mom’s job at the fish meal factory for weakening her immune system, so the cancerous cells had had free rein.

  “It’s just not fair that she worked her ass off her whole life, and when she finally retires, and she’s going to enjoy life and spend time on herself, then this shit happens to her!”

  At the end of their visit, Camilla signaled the waiter to ask for the bill and then headed back to the editor’s office.

  * * *

  It was almost six o’clock when she finally pulled herself together and opened the anonymous letter. Once she had read it, she went through it one more time:

  “Now that the paper seemingly has put its mind to looking for scratches in the veneer of idyllic Skagen, maybe you should also look into the large sums of money that pass under the nose of the IRS, when the whores sell themselves to the richest tourists.”

  The sender claimed that everything was managed professionally by the high-class whores themselves, who had their base of operations in Skagen and a network of customers whom they served every year in peak season. “They make hundreds of thousands of kroner every week,” the letter said. And apparently it wasn’t just about quick lays, either, but about men buying the company of exclusive escorts. The kind of company involving expensive meals at the right places, rides in convertibles, strolls in the marina, or sailing on big yachts. Everything lonely, rich men needed a companion for to make the vacation perfect. Sexual services were included in the exorbitant fee, of course.

  Camilla put the letter down. She was aware that being an expensive hooker in the hotels of Copenhagen could be a lucrative business. But she would never have associated that kind of thing with respectable Skagen. Then again, where there’s money and lonely men…

  * * *

  Eva had invited Michael to join them for dinner. Markus was with Anders and had insisted on staying the next two days, so he could go visit his cousin’s grandmother in Kandestederne. And they didn’t see much of Sofie these days, not after she had changed her look and started spending all her time with her new friends.

  When Camilla told Michael about the letter, she sensed that her friend in the police force didn’t exactly disbelieve her, but he didn’t want to say much about it, either. Eva, on the other hand, with a faraway look in her eyes, said that she hoped it wasn’t something Camilla was considering writing about in the paper.

  Camilla couldn’t help laughing and called her a prude. But when Eva repeated that she shouldn’t poke her nose into everything, Camilla realized that she was serious. Her stepmother probably didn’t want to see her beloved Skagen blemished by this kind of disclosure, and that awoke Camilla’s journalist’s curiosity. But the only thing Eva kept saying was that some things were better left alone.

  After coffee, she suggested to Michael that they go to the disco in Old Skagen, where members of the Danish royal family occasionally took over the dance floor, along with the upper crust of the Danish jet set. Champagne corks would regularly pop to the tune of many thousands of kroner in a single night.

  Back when Camilla was still living at home, she’d never dream of going out on the town in Old Skagen. It was way too snobbish for her
taste. But if the tip-off about the prostitutes was based on facts, then the disco was probably a good bet, if she wanted to poke a little into the story.

  The place was packed, and she almost had to shout when she asked Michael how to tell the hookers apart.

  “When it’s the kind of prostitute you’re looking for, you won’t be able to tell by their looks. That’s why they’re so expensive,” he answered, and nodded with noticeable relief when she suggested that they leave again.

  * * *

  The next day, Camilla dug deeper into the story about the high-end whores.

  “There are supposed to be two who are way up on the expensive end,” she told Eva at the dinner table. There was just the two of them, and suddenly Camilla felt empty without Markus. They had visited the hospital earlier. The occupational therapists had recently started the process of rehabilitating Camilla’s dad, and Camilla and her stepmom hadn’t had a chance to talk about the newspaper nor the research she had been doing.

  “Now all I need to do is find out who those two are.” She told Eva about the source she had found at Ruth’s Hotel, who had started talking when she promised him anonymity.

  Eva pushed her plate away and sat for a moment with folded hands. At last she asked her earnestly to leave the story be.

  Camilla started to get annoyed, but suddenly it struck her that it had to be because her stepmom knew who it was.

  “You can’t just hush up stuff like that, just because it doesn’t look proper in the middle of paradise,” she exclaimed indignantly.

  Eva repeated quietly and with moist eyes that she hoped Camilla would respect her wishes, now that she had asked her to let it go.

  They sat in silence awhile before Camilla looked at her stepmom and asked who she was covering for.

  She was in no way prepared for the answer, as Eva looked down at the tablecloth and whispered, “Don’t you understand, it’s Annette?”

  Camilla gasped for breath. Her Annette wasn’t a damn hooker. She designed websites and made good money doing it. Then she started laughing.

  “That’s right,” said Eva. “Let’s not fuss about that anymore.”

  Her stepmom got up and began clearing the table.

  Camilla remained seated, feeling as if she had been run over by a car. She thought of Annette and the summer vacations in Old Skagen; she would damn well have known if things were like that. But then, she didn’t really know much about life during the summer up here, not any longer. She and Markus would come every year for a week at most, and she didn’t see that much of her friend while they were here. But it seemed absurd, and the only sensible thing to do was to ask her directly. But if it really were the case, she wondered whether she would be able to write the story at all.

  * * *

  The next morning, she called Annette and asked if she had time to meet for coffee, and an hour later they were sitting at Ruth’s. Camilla had a hard time finding the right way to approach the subject but eventually just jumped right into it.

  “I had a tip yesterday and would like to ask you,” she began and inhaled deeply, “if you should happen to know anything about prostitution here in Skagen.”

  At first, Annette didn’t react. Then she let her gaze run along the dunes, before straightening up and looking at Camilla.

  “It’s ten thousand for one night,” she said. “Fifteen, including the afternoon, and twenty thousand for the whole day—plus food, drink, and entertainment,” she added, staring Camilla right in the eyes.

  Camilla caught herself gaping—she could hear what her friend was saying, but at the same time, it was as if the words didn’t fit her.

  “It would destroy my mother if it came out,” Annette continued, slumping slightly down. “I won’t try to prevent you from writing about it, but if you do, I want to ask you to change my name. And then, I’d like you to know that I’ve just stopped and have canceled all my regular clients.”

  * * *

  Turmoil was tearing Camilla apart when she arrived back at the editorial office. She reread the letter and sucked air deep down into her stomach before settling in front of the computer to write about yet another dark side of Skagen.

  5

  The police had still not made any arrests following the assault, but John Lind was finally starting to make progress. He had been moved to Frederikshavn Hospital a couple of days before, and the rehabilitation program was moving according to schedule. The patient was sitting up in a wheelchair several hours every day, and Camilla had drawn a chair up to his, so she could read him the article about the whores. After that, she had held his gaze and asked him to squeeze her hand if he didn’t want her to print the story in his paper. There was no squeeze, but later, as she sat in her car in the parking lot, she had second thoughts and decided to return. This time she asked John to squeeze her hand if he agreed that she should print it. They looked each other in the eyes, and it wasn’t long before the squeeze came.

  * * *

  “Have you no shame?” H.C. slammed the table hard and leaned over Camilla’s desk. “Are there no limits to what you’ll dig up and expose in our paper?”

  She slumped back in her chair and looked at SkagensPosten’s regular journalist with surprise. H.C. had always seemed calm and genial to her, maybe a bit lumbering but a decent guy. Now he was exploding right in front of her, crimson-faced.

  “This is a weekly, goddamn it! We write about art exhibitions and recent promotions in the bank. We tell the locals what’s happening in the area and what will happen during the coming week. This is not Morgenavisen, for fuck’s sake, and you’re not hired to revolutionize your father’s life’s work.”

  He was about to go on but turned around and walked away instead. Camilla was left completely taken aback and could almost feel the imprints of his fingers on her cheek, but before she had a chance to point out that what she was printing was precisely what was happening around the natives of Skagen at the moment, H.C. left the room.

  * * *

  High-class whores in Skagen. Opinions on the article, which was that week’s top story in SkagensPosten, were varied. People talked.

  On the day the paper came out with the story on the front page, all the copies flew from the newstands. Camilla increased the print run several times, and the newspaper’s sales department experienced what it felt like not to able to find space for all the ads streaming in. Camilla imagined how her dad would have rubbed his hands at the thought of all the art books he would be able to print.

  Some argued that it was naïve to think that that sort of thing didn’t happen. During summer, the name of the game for a lot of the holiday crowd was to flash their wealth. Gigantic yachts were berthed. Jaguars were parked in the harbor side by side with Porsche convertibles. Of course, men of that caliber were not alone, but always in the company of beautiful, well-dressed women.

  Then there was the other camp. Those who thought that Camilla’s story was made up. A letter to the editor claimed that so many frisky women with a penchant for exclusive dinners and rich company came to Skagen during the summer that no man had to pay an escort. All they had to do was drop by The Warehouse down in the harbor and order a tray of Irish coffees; after that they would only have to lean back and wait.

  * * *

  Camilla tried to ignore the angry letters. She still believed there was good reason to write about the high-price sex workers. The story showed exactly how Skagen was transforming, as the place grew more and more popular with each year that passed.

  She had gotten hold of the town’s mayor and asked him, somewhat sanctimoniously, if this was how he liked to see his town:

  “Isn’t the town forgetting what attracted the tourists to the place to begin with?”

  She had held his gaze. When the mayor didn’t reply, she brought up the art and the beautiful natural light herself.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to focus on those things again?” she had asked him.

  After that, she had visited the chamber of commer
ce to ask the manager if the current retail environment, what with Old Skagen’s increasingly upscale image, could be called unpredictable. Everything was getting pricier and flashier: jeans cost upwards of 4000 kroner in town. Who the fuck needed super-expensive jeans when they were vacationing near the northernmost tip of Denmark?

  She loved the adrenaline kick that came from not getting a direct answer to her questions. Of course, high-class hookers were no surprise in a town that did everything to attract the very wealthiest people in the country.

  * * *

  Camilla was tired and dazed when she woke up Saturday morning. It was almost eleven, and she turned to the naked body lying beside her.

  David had been sitting in the kitchen when she came home from the paper late Friday afternoon. She hadn’t thought much about her boyfriend during the weeks she had spent in Skagen. However, the moment she saw him, a deep longing hit home. She suddenly realized how much she had missed him, and how deeply she had buried herself in work.

  He had made reservations at The Fish Restaurant. The champagne was in the ice bucket when they arrived, and soon after, the waiter placed a large tray of shellfish on the table.

  Camilla told David about the women. She justified printing the article by arguing that the seamy downside of idyllic Skagen shouldn’t grow any bigger, at least not if she could help it. She had e-mailed the article to Annette before printing it, so her friend would have time to prepare for whatever might be coming. Camilla had meticulously hidden all information that might hint at the identity of the person at the center of the story.

  Annette’s reply was a short invitation to come over to her house in Kandestederne soon to ride Icelandic ponies on the beach. She didn’t mention the article at all, and Camilla interpreted that as a sign that they still had a friendship, even if she’d chosen to print it.