Farewell to Freedom

by Sara Blaedel

  Inside the corridor Lars stopped abruptly. Louise ran into him with such force that he lost his balance and fell against the wall.

  The African girl’s body was naked. Small and slender, with her feet dangling thirty centimeters off the floor, she hung from a row of coat pegs on the wall with her arms stretched out on the coat hangers like a female version of Jesus on the cross. Her head hung limply to one side, her eyes were closed, and a thin stream of blood trickled down her cheek from a cut over her left eyebrow.

  The screams stopped, replaced by faint sobs coming from a blonde girl standing in the doorway next to the coat hooks. She was wearing black lace underwear and rocked from side to side as she wept.

  Mikkelsen and Lars lifted the girl down. Her legs trembled, but she was conscious. Louise took a blanket that someone handed her from a door that opened but then quickly closed again. She helped the girl sit down on the bed in a little booth that stank of sweat, semen, and poor ventilation.

  “Do you speak English?” Louise asked, wrapping the blanket around the girl’s shoulders.

  The African girl shook her head listlessly as she reached for a paper towel that she tore off a roll on a small table. The cut over her eye was bleeding heavily now, and she dabbed at her cheek first, and then pressed the paper towel to her eyebrow to stop the bleeding. She looked like she’d taken more blows than the one that had split open her brow, but she looked away every time Louise spoke to her. Finally, Louise got up and left the woman alone to collect herself.

  Mikkelsen was with the blonde who had summoned them with her screams. He knew her. The girl’s name was Anita, and the needle tracks on her arms were so visible that it was obvious she had been using for a long time. Her sobs subsided, and she blew her nose loudly on the tissue Mikkelsen handed her.

  “I heard him hitting her, but I had to finish with my customer before I could see if she was all right,” Anita said with a hacking cough. “And there she was, hanging there. Not making a sound. I thought she was fucking dead.”

  “Did you see who did it?” asked Mikkelsen.

  Anita shook her head.

  “Was he middle-aged and a bit heavy-set, in a white mason’s cap?” Louise asked, jumping into the conversation.

  Anita looked at her and then shook her head again.

  “No, that was the guy with me,” she replied. “He took off when his wife sent him a text message reminding him to buy some milk on the way home.”

  She gave a hollow laugh as she turned around and started getting dressed with the door still open.

  “He gave me an extra hundred,” she said, pulling her blouse over her head. “I’m sure he heard the guy punching her too. He probably thought the big tip would get him out of any obligation to find out if she was all right.”

  “It happened before we got there,” Mikkelsen said once they were again standing outside on Istedgade. “So it’s impossible to know who did that to her.”

  Louise refrained from pointing out he hadn’t asked the African girl to produce any ID. They had walked the woman over to The Nest, a shelter for prostitutes where they could rest, take a shower, and get a hot meal. The volunteers would also be able to find her a doctor if she needed to have the cut over her eyebrow stitched.

  “Some johns think they can get away with damn near anything just because they shell out 300 kroner for a lay,” Mikkelsen said after they dropped the battered girl off. “If the man can’t get it up, then it’s the girl’s fault, and she has to be punished for failing to deliver.”

  He shook his head and they began walking back toward Halmtorvet, which was where they’d decided to start searching for witnesses who might have seen the murder victim in the area or noticed anything unusual around Skelbækgade the previous night.

  5

  ON HER WAY BACK TO MORGENAVISEN, CAMILLA CALLED HER editor to give him more information than was in the brief text message she had sent. She promised there was enough material on the abandoned-baby story for it to carry the next day’s front page, what with the pastor and the two boys’ statements, and she told him she also wanted to go ahead with the story on the murdered prostitute in Kødbyen.

  “I wonder why the baby was left in that church?” the editor wondered fifteen minutes later as he sat down on the extra chair in Camilla’s office to get more details on the story. “You would assume it was someone from the area—someone who was already familiar with the church—wouldn’t you?”

  Camilla shrugged and said the pastor hadn’t been able to think of anyone who was pregnant and due around this time who was associated with the church in any way.

  “The police are questioning people in the neighborhood, but neither Pastor Holm nor the boys saw anyone. I’m waiting to hear back from the hospital to find out what they have to say about the time of birth or any other details. Personally, I’m guessing the baby wasn’t more than a few hours old. The techs are investigating whether the woman gave birth in the church or if she maybe just left the baby there.”

  “You should head out there and find out what people in the area have to say. And if I remember right, there’s a daycare or a nursery school a little farther down the road. We should do the rounds. Also talk to a couple of pregnant women who are due to give birth soon. What do they have to say about someone abandoning a baby right after birth?”

  Camilla could tell that he was looking for the right way to put it before he added that of course they should also take advantage of the fact that they had a line on an inside scoop.

  “We ought to be way ahead of everyone else when we run the story tomorrow,” he said, standing up.

  Camilla nodded. Of course he would see it that way. For her part, she wasn’t sure how she felt about having her own son suddenly in the public eye like this, but of course at the same time she could see that it would be hypocritical to insist that he be kept out of it since she spent most of her time trying to get eyewitnesses to talk.

  “I’ll start with writing about how they found her and then we’ll see what the police have to say about the towel she was wrapped in.”

  After Høyer left, Camilla took out her cell phone and looked at the pictures she’d managed to snap of the newborn. She hadn’t told anyone she had them, nor was she planning to. She could still feel the baby’s tiny body against her chest and was trying to remember what the mood in the pastor’s kitchen was like when she arrived. Markus described how the baby cried and cried, and Pastor Holm described how the cries went straight to his heart.

  Well, she couldn’t have been crying like that all night, Camilla thought as she browsed through the pictures she’d taken. Such a tiny baby wouldn’t have the energy for that.

  She closed the photo app and dialed Rasmus Hem at the Bellahøj precinct, whom she had met at the pastor’s residence that morning.

  “Have you determined the time of birth?” Camilla asked after explaining that she was Markus’s mother and that they had met that morning.

  “I don’t recall you mentioning you are a reporter,” he said frostily.

  “Well, I really didn’t think it was the right time to get into that. The only reason I was at the pastor’s residence this morning was because my son was upset about what he had just seen. If I had been planning to exploit the situation, I would have been pressing you for details this morning. I held that little girl in my arms and I would really like to help reunite her with her mother.”

  The officer sighed and grumbled a little before finally continuing.

  “As I believe I also told you this morning, I have no idea if being reunited with a mother who abandoned her would be the best thing for her. Perhaps it would be better for the baby to be adopted as soon as possible, so she can get a fresh start on life,” he said, adding after a brief pause that the last part was off the record.

  “Of course,” Camilla said. For a second she agreed with him, but then she admitted to herself that despite a rough start, she still thought it was best for a child to be with the woman who gave birth to
her. After all, she thought, the child should have a sense of being rooted in her identity later in life.

  “Nonsense!” Officer Hem hissed tersely. “Most women can give birth to a child, but that is absolutely not the same thing as knowing how to be a mother.”

  Camilla didn’t touch that, but she did jot the expression down in her notebook. She repeated her question about the time of birth, and she wasn’t surprised when he said the doctors estimated it to be late last night or early that same morning.

  “Did it happen in the church?”

  “Too soon to say.”

  “Do you have anything on the towel?” she continued.

  “Afraid not. It’s from one of the big national chain stores, Føtex, we think. They sell hundreds of them every year, so it’ll be impossible to find the buyer.”

  “But you are going to have it analyzed to possibly ID the mother?”

  “Of course, but obviously the technicians need a little time, and then they’ll have to run whatever DNA they find on it. We won’t get the results back until next week at the earliest.”

  “How is she doing?” Camilla finally asked.

  The officer’s voice perked up. “I just came from the hospital, and she’s spending most of her time sleeping like most newborns, so I’m guessing she’s doing quite well,” he said, and then added that the little girl had gotten something to eat and been cleaned up.

  Camilla thanked him and gave him her number, even though she didn’t expect he would call when anything new turned up on the case. She would follow up on it later, and in the meantime she would try to find out what the police had learned about the murder on Skelbækgade.

  She called the chief of homicide at Police Headquarters, who impatiently referred her to Willumsen, but so far that was a dead end. Willumsen and Camilla had butted heads on several occasions in the past. The first time was when a colleague of hers at the paper had been murdered because of a drug story he was working on. It hadn’t improved Camilla and Willumsen’s relationship when she quoted him in a article and made prominent mention that his title had recently changed from “detective superintendent” to the lesser-sounding “police superintendent” as a part of the reorganization.

  So now she sat here with her hand on the receiver, wondering whom she could call instead of Willumsen. She decided to start with Louise to find out who else had been assigned to the case.

  Camilla and Louise had known each other since high school in Roskilde, and even though they were quite different in many ways, they had become best friends over the years. She dialed Louise’s cell number, bypassing the phone tree through the main police switchboard.

  “Actually I’m on that case,” Louise said.

  Camilla could hear traffic noise in the background.

  “Am I bothering you? You sound like you’re outside.”

  “It’s fine. I’m on Sønder Boulevard. We’re trying to find out who the girl was. I’ll just step into a doorway so I can hear you better.”

  “Is there anything new? Have you found out where she was from?”

  “No,” Louise replied. “Apparently no one saw anything.”

  “What happened out there in Kødbyen?”

  Camilla realized Louise was stalling to avoid giving privileged information to the press, so she tried reassuring Louise that she was of course aware that the lead case investigator should actually be the source for all the information about the case, and it worked.

  “Her throat was slit in the middle of the night,” Louise explained, “but you won’t get much farther on the story right now. We’re going to spend the rest of the day and evening canvassing for witnesses, and obviously we’re hoping that someone can help us ID her. I’m under the impression that Willumsen is planning to release a picture of the victim sometime tomorrow, but you’ll have to talk to him about that.”

  Camilla nodded at the phone, knowing that she would have to accept going through official channels if she wanted more information, so she changed topics and told Louise about the abandoned baby that Markus and his friend had found.

  “I think what shook Markus the most was that a mother just abandoned a newborn baby like that, leaving her lying there all alone. If they hadn’t found her, she could have died.”

  “It must have been a terrible experience for him,” Louise said, suddenly warm again, and concerned. She asked how Markus was doing now.

  Although Louise didn’t have any children of her own—and had maintained for years that one could easily have a happy and meaningful life without children—she was very close to Camilla’s son. Sometimes Camilla even felt a little excluded when Markus and Louise were together.

  “I think he’s all right, but I suspect it’ll stick with him for a while.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” Louise said, full of concern.

  Camilla said he was still over at his friend’s house.

  “Then I’ll call him tomorrow and tell him he’s welcome to call me if there’s anything I can do. Also, I’ll try to see if I can find out how the baby girl is doing. Another division would be handling that case, so I haven’t even heard about it—and obviously we have plenty of our own cases to keep us busy.”

  6

  “H OMICIDE SQUAD, LOUISE RICK SPEAKING.”

  She stifled a yawn. She and Lars had been out until one the night before, working with Mikkelsen and a couple of his people. As darkness slowly fell over the city, they had made contact with every living thing in the vicinity of the murder that could crawl or walk.

  “This is the duty desk. Are you working on that murder down in Kødbyen?”

  “Yeah, me and several other detectives,” Louise said, leaning back in her chair.

  “There’s a man down here who’d like to talk to you. He says he has information that might pertain to the murder.”

  Louise was on her feet before she’d hung up the phone. The new security procedures at Copenhagen Police Headquarters meant that no one was allowed to walk around freely in the building without identification. They were so strict about it that even the chief superintendent had been asked to show ID, because the desk clerk didn’t recognize him—or maybe he recognized him, but didn’t think he should be given any special treatment.

  Louise opted for taking the stairs down and took a shortcut through the memorial garden for fallen officers before crossing the round courtyard that led to the front of the building.

  The man who was waiting for her had his hands in his pockets. She quickly estimated him to be somewhere in his mid-thirties. He was leaning against the wall, but when he saw her approaching, he started over to meet her. He had his red visitor’s badge clipped to the pocket of his light blue, short-sleeved shirt under his leather jacket. His dark hair was neatly combed back.

  Louise noted that his eyes wandered a bit as she approached.

  “You had something you wanted to tell me?” she prompted after she had introduced herself and they were walking back across the courtyard.

  He nodded in silence and only now did it occur to her that she wasn’t sure he spoke Danish, but when she asked he smiled.

  “Some,” he said. He had a distinct accent, but they wouldn’t need an interpreter.

  Lars had been making a fresh pot of coffee when the front desk called, and so he cocked his head with a puzzled look when they came into the office they shared, and Louise asked the visitor to take a seat.

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she offered, gesturing to the coffee pot. “Or some water?”

  The man politely declined both.

  Louise briefly explained to her partner that their visitor was here because he might have information about the woman in Kødbyen.

  Lars eyed the man with curiosity.

  “Sounds good.” He turned and looked back at Louise. “Would you like some privacy?”

  She shook her head. It was fine if he stayed.

  “Then I’ll take notes,” he offered and turned to his computer screen.

  To pu
t it mildly, Willumsen had not been particularly thrilled with the lack of progress in the case at the morning briefing. Louise had caught Lars’s eyes during Willumsen’s rant, and she could tell that Lars agreed with her. Willumsen could shout and scream. They’d figured out a long time ago why his cases always got off to such a good start. It was quite simply because he selfishly dragged detectives in from the other groups without asking for permission, so his team had triple the usual manpower or more for the first few days. In this case, however, he had not commandeered people, which was obviously a sign that a prostitute’s murder didn’t rank very high on his priority list.

  She put aside her thoughts of Willumsen and looked at her visitor, who was sitting with his hands folded in his lap.

  “Let’s start by getting your name and address,” Louise said. She was eager to find out what had brought him in. You didn’t get many freebies in cases like these, and so far they hadn’t had a single one.

  “Miloš Vituk,” he said and then helped Lars with the spelling. He said he was thirty-six and Serbian, but that he’d been living in Denmark since 1995, when he had moved to get away from the civil war.

  Lars’s coffee got cold while his fingers were busy pecking on his keyboard. Once the formalities were taken care of, Lars and Louise waited for the visitor to begin, listening patiently as he cleared his throat a couple of times before he spoke.

  “In the beginning of January, I was stopped on the street by a young woman when I came out of a shop on Halmtorvet. She was very unhappy, crying, and said she was scared and needed help.”

  “Did you know her or had you ever seen her before?” Louise asked, raising an eyebrow. After a moment’s hesitation, he shrugged his shoulders.

  “I may have seen her a time or two, but I didn’t know her name and I didn’t know where she was from.”

  Louise nodded and asked him to continue.

  “She seemed really shaken. She didn’t speak any Danish, and I had a hard time understanding her English, but I said we could go get something warm to drink. She was shivering and definitely wasn’t wearing enough clothing for how cold it was. But she didn’t want to do that. She was very afraid. She kept looking around the whole time.”