by Sara Blaedel
“I’d like to help,” Camilla had tried to say, only for Sachs-Smith to continue.
“I would like you to emphasize in your article that no charges need be brought if only my grandchild is returned to us unharmed. No one should be left in any doubt that the Angel of Death has already cost far too many lives.”
* * *
Camilla had snuggled into the sofa with her laptop. She was trying to focus on the story and had spread all her notes out around her, including the closely written splashy postcards from Hawaii that now covered the surface of the coffee table, but she was having difficulty getting started.
After her talk with Walther Sachs-Smith, Frederik had come into the living room and sat down opposite her in the white armchair. She had sensed something serious and even before he began to speak she found she had resigned herself to his also having realized that the sensible thing would be to break off their relationship. Even if the sex was good there was still a long way between the United States and Frederiksberg.
“I love you,” he said, reaching a hand across the table and taking hold of hers. “Come and live with me.”
At first she had no idea what to say. He had completely caught her off guard.
“I can’t,” she said, smiling to hide how moved she was by his suggestion. “What about Markus?”
So maybe it wasn’t all over after all, she managed to think fleetingly, sensing a warmth spread inside her when she realized this was something he had been thinking about for some time. His reply certainly indicated he had been investigating all the possibilities:
“There’s a good high school nearby, and an international private school if you think that would be better. We could get him enrolled, it wouldn’t be a problem.”
Camilla was speechless and could only stare at him.
We could get him enrolled. He made it sound like he wanted to adopt her son. He, who had never had children of his own. But she knew he and Markus had hit it off. She knew, too, that it was because Frederik actually liked to spend time with him. Unlike the boy’s own father, who seemed more interested in his new wife and the baby they were expecting that summer. Markus and his father were together a couple of days every other weekend at most now, and even that seemed to be happening less and less.
“I know that he needs to keep up his relationship to his father,” Frederik had gone on when she didn’t know what to say to his suggestion concerning school. “But the flights are very regular.”
It wasn’t because she didn’t want to reply. She was simply at a loss for words. She still had not gotten used to the idea of money being no object. He was so wealthy that day-to-day finances never came into the picture.
She closed her laptop, finding her thoughts just wouldn’t leave her alone. Frederik had borrowed her little Fiat so he could drive to Roskilde and be with his sister and their father. She had been intending to spend the whole day working on the article. But it was no use: She couldn’t concentrate.
What on earth would she do over there? Frederik had said she could write scripts with him. She could keep her flat in Frederiksberg as a base whenever she needed to be in Denmark.
He seemed to have an answer to her every question. It was obvious to her that he really had thought things through. She thought perhaps that was what made her feel so good about it all.
The prospect buzzed in her mind, like an insistent swarm of insects on a warm summer’s eve.
Her phone had been already been ringing for a while before she even noticed.
* * *
“Willumsen just had a heart attack,” Louise began, her voice trailing away.
“What?” Camilla exclaimed. This sudden information instantly pushed her own concerns to the back of her mind. “Are you over at HQ?”
“He just collapsed,” Louise said, picking up the thread again, her voice thin and feeble. “Suhr tried to revive him while someone called emergency services.”
“Is he dead?” Camilla asked incredulously, picturing the dark-haired superintendent in her mind’s eye. The two of them had had their tussles over the years. Nevertheless, her stomach knotted.
“No,” Louise replied, “there was still a pulse. It was all so awful; he just collapsed in front of us in mid-sentence. Like someone just switched him off.”
“I really hope it’s not serious,” Camilla said, and heard Louise blow her nose at the other end.
“Me, too,” Louise replied weakly and blew her nose again, before abruptly changing the subject. “We’re pretty sure the Sachs-Smith family’s attorney is involved in at least four killings,” she said. “He was also captured by the CCTV at the Hotel Prindsen at the time of Carl Emil’s murder.”
“Oh, my God!” Camilla exclaimed.
Louise went on, “We’ve put a nationwide search out for him, the public advised to approach only with extreme caution. He may well have left the country already. We’ve notified police in Sweden and put checks on the border to Germany. Interpol have been issued descriptions of both him and the car.”
She added that they were reasonably sure the Angel of Death was in the back of his car.
“What about the girl?” Camilla breathed, thinking once again of the family.
“We don’t know,” Louise answered. “But I think it’s most likely he got rid of her.”
Camilla was unable to speak a word as Louise brought the call to an end. All of a sudden Santa Barbara seemed so far away she could barely entertain the thought of it.
Got rid of her?
“Call me when there’s news about Willumsen,” she managed to say before Louise hung up.
40
Willumsen had been collected by an ambulance. The medics had tried to resuscitate him, but as they sped away they had still not succeeded in restarting his heart, which had apparently stopped since Suhr’s CPR.
Shocked and exhausted, Louise shut down her computer after speaking to Camilla and decided to go home and sleep for a couple of hours. Putting on her coat, she felt she ought to call Rønholt and hear if there was anything new, but she simply hadn’t the strength. What she needed now was to be off the job, if only for a few hours. The events of the last few days seemed suddenly to bear down on her, and after seeing the ambulance crew dash away with Willumsen like that it had all become too much for her.
She borrowed the keys of a service car from the front office and drove off to Frederiksberg. It had been years since she had felt the kind of fear she did now: the fear of an emotional breakdown. She had been working hard to keep it at bay. And Jakobsen, the department’s crisis counselor, had helped her with techniques she could use so as not to experience other people’s grief as her own. Of course, she was fully aware she needed to be in her work headspace if she was to be able to think clearly, but right now that distance was very difficult indeed for her to visualize.
So she went home instead.
The flat was empty when she stepped inside the hall. Maybe Jonas had taken Dina for a walk. She had been hoping he would be there when she came in. She glanced up at the time and saw it was half an hour since the last lesson had ended.
She took a soft drink out of the fridge and sat down at the table. She was a poor substitute for a mother, that much seemed clear to her. But at this moment she missed the boy so terribly.
She answered her phone as soon as it rang. It was Lars Jørgensen.
“Willumsen’s dead,” he said quietly. “He died in the ambulance on his way to the hospital.”
Louise swallowed.
“Thanks for calling,” she mumbled and hung up. And then she began to cry.
She didn’t hear the door when it opened, or realize that Jonas had come in and was standing perplexed beside her. It was only when he crouched down that she discovered he was there.
“What’s wrong?” he asked anxiously and put his arm around her. “Is it that little girl?”
Louise glanced around for some paper towels. She didn’t care for him to see her in such a state.
On
ce she had blown her nose and dabbed her eyes, she shook her head.
“Willumsen’s dead,” she said, sensing how unreal it felt to speak the words out loud.
She drew him close. Jonas knew the superintendent and was fond of him. Willumsen had been anything but the blunt and unpleasant policeman on the occasions he and the boy had met, and while Louise thought she would most probably remember him for his brusque demeanor, she was so upset by the news that her whole being seemed racked with grief.
“He collapsed at work today. It was a heart attack.”
“I’m really sorry,” Jonas said.
Louise tried to respond with a smile. “Maybe not everyone will miss him shouting, ‘What do you think this is, a rest home for pregnant nuns?’”
She choked up again and sobbed, but looked up when she sensed that Jonas was about to say something.
“At school some of them say my parents are lucky to be dead so they don’t have to look at me anymore.”
Louise gasped for breath.
“They say what?”
He nodded and lowered his head, his hair flopping down to cover his eyes.
She turned to face him fully and put her hands on his shoulders. “Who says that?”
“A few of them,” he replied without looking up, clearly uncomfortable with having to tell her.
Louise stood up and held him tight.
“What a nasty thing to say,” she whispered.
She could feel the tension in his body underneath his hoodie and hugged him tighter.
“How long has this been going on?” she asked when eventually she let go.
He shrugged without saying anything.
“It started off with Lasse,” he said when finally he looked up at her. “After what happened to Signe.”
Louise nodded. She had been to pick him up several times when he had spent the night with his friend down by the city lakes, but she had no idea they had fallen out.
“It started with him saying Signe probably didn’t mind being dead if it meant she could get rid of me.”
Tears welled now behind his long, dark lashes.
Signe and Jonas had been in the same class since they had started school, and in the year before the accident they had been seeing each other a lot. She had been killed one dark evening after running out in front of a car in panic. Her death had hit Jonas hard. He had known far too much grief in such a short time, Louise thought to herself, finding it hard to understand why he had kept quiet about it.
“Now he and a couple of the others are saying Mom and Dad are lucky they can’t see me making a fool of myself chasing Eva around.”
Eva? Louise thought, trying to put a face to the name.
“Lasse’s had a crush on her for the last six months, but she’s not interested. That’s why.”
“Does your teacher know about any of this?”
He nodded and snorted in a way she at first was unsure how to interpret.
“It’d be hard not to know, the way they go around shouting it all over school.”
She felt a rush of rage that forced her body into motion, propelling her to the kitchen window where she stood and looked down into the rear courtyard, saddened by the thought that she had so patently failed to see the signs. She ought to have reacted, done something. But she had been immersed in her work.
She buried her face in her hands for a second.
“Is that why you hit him?” she asked, turning to face him again.
Jonas nodded.
“I’ll phone that school right away; let me just find the number,” she said.
A shadow passed over his face. “No, please don’t,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to be a snitch.”
“But, Jonas”—she stepped up to him again—“putting up with things is fine once in a while. But when there’s bullying and someone’s saying things as mean as that, your teacher has to step in. And the school executives should be fully informed.”
“I’d still much rather you didn’t.”
Louise studied him for a moment before capitulating with a reluctant nod. Her rage, however, remained.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “What about Lasse’s parents? They should know what their son’s going around saying, surely?”
Jonas shook his head quickly.
“I’ll manage,” he said, and Louise realized he meant it. But she promised herself she would never again allow him to be pushed to the point where he began to lash out physically. She was his adoptive mother and responsible for him; it was imperative she be there for him whenever he needed her.
“Can I stay at Eva’s tonight?” he asked, unable once again to look her in the eye, but this time, she sensed, it was more down to regular self-consciousness.
Louise smiled at him.
“If you pack your school bag and remember your toothbrush, and make sure Lasse and the other boys see the two of you coming to school together in the morning, then yes, it’s okay by me.”
41
Miklos Wedersøe had just passed the Padborg exit and was approaching the German border when he saw the blue lights flashing in his rearview mirror. Two patrol cars, as far as he could tell, and it was no coincidence they had appeared at the same time.
They were after him, and they were close. He put his foot down and felt the thrust of the big Mercedes as it seamlessly picked up speed. A hundred eighty, two hundred kilometers per hour and still effortlessly accelerating as he flicked on the main beam and arrowed into the fast lane to shake off his pursuers.
Though his heart was beating fast, he still savored the sheer velocity provided by the vehicle’s horsepower—more than six hundred—and the distance it instantly put between him and the two cars behind.
He focused fully on his driving and ignored the dwindling image of his pursuers in the mirror. He was so close to the border now that he had hoped to simply slip through and away. But then, he also had a plan in the event he were thwarted. It was a good plan, he thought, proceeding from the assumption that the police had by now found the keys he had left on the kitchen counter at home.
He was strong, and his weapons were honed.
Suddenly he felt the blood begin to pound in his temples at the thought of the police’s own, very real weapons that might soon be trained on him. A Volvo station wagon made to pull out in front of him and he pressed the horn down hard with the flat of his hand, causing the intrusive vehicle to shrink back into its own lane in fright.
He ought to have secured himself a weapon, but he had not had time and would most likely not be needing one anyway, he told himself.
He had the girl.
A moment later he saw them up ahead. The flashing lights coming toward him on the opposite, northbound lane. He noted how the police car sped up the slope of the exit, but he knew it would be unable to catch up with him. He was safely in control in the fast lane, and they would first have to negotiate the highway bridge before being able to join the pursuit in the southbound direction.
The adrenaline rushed through his arteries as it registered that the police would be intensifying their chase now that they’d pinpointed his position.
Abruptly he stepped on the brakes as a truck suddenly crawled into his lane a few hundred meters ahead to overtake a van that was hogging the middle lane. He sensed immediately the futility of trying to bully the huge vehicle back into place; he would have to slow down.
Nervously he glanced back in the mirror and saw the police car now coming down the access road onto the highway behind him.
Several trucks drove in a convoy in the inside lane. It would take time before the one in the fast lane had overtaken the van.
Time was precious and it occurred to him that it might already be too late. His pulse throbbed and his hands were sweaty as they clutched the leather steering wheel. With a quick look back he veered onto the shoulder and put his foot down.
The automatic transmission thrust him forward to pass the
convoy of trucks on the inside. He saw he was doing 160 when his brain registered that he was hemmed in. The convoy lay stretched out nose-to-tail; the Mercedes would surely be crushed if he tried to slip in between.
Taking chances was not his forte. He thought of the icon under the quilt in the back and heard the sirens: They were close now.
He accelerated along the shoulder, so squeezed in that he lacked the courage to even glance to the side, forced to fix his gaze on the narrow ribbon of asphalt in front of him. The convoy closed him off from the other lanes entirely and he was unable to see the police cars, but figured they would hardly be alongside yet.
Focus. He was so concentrated that beads of sweat trickled from his bald head without him noticing. Only when they ran over his eyebrows and into his eyes, momentarily blurring his vision, did he release the steering wheel with one hand to wipe them away.
One more truck and the convoy would be behind him. He was going to make it, he told himself, and then, as if to endorse his optimism, the highway opened up ahead.
Filled with relief, he saw that the police cars were still some way behind him. But then, as he swept through the highway’s gentle curve, he saw a police roadblock looming up in the distance, stretched out across all three lanes.
The sweat poured from him now, its salt stinging in his eyes. He saw there was no exit by which he might escape before reaching the roadblock. They must have known, he thought rationally, and understood in the same instant that he was trapped.
Glancing to the side, he saw that the steep bank that lined the highway was too much of an obstacle and likewise quickly dismissed all thought of ramming his way through the line of police cars that had been parked bumper-to-bumper to cut off the way ahead. The white vehicles had their blue lights flashing and the police themselves stood in front like a human shield.
Behind him he heard again the shrill scream of pursuing sirens and was immediately jolted back to reality.
