by Sara Blaedel
Louise nodded. She knew looking away was an easy way to tip people off. They made room for Toft and Stig as they passed Hotel Scandinavia and agreed that their colleagues would turn off at police HQ while they followed the Audi for the rest of the trip.
They continued along Tietgensgade behind Central Station, and with the sun glaring on the windshield they drove down past the conference center.
There was a lot of traffic. It was a quarter after five, and the cars were inching along over Halmtorvet. If they lost the Audi, they could fall back on the electronic chip Toft had mounted underneath it, but they wanted to be able to follow them in person to see where they went after they parked.
With two cars between, they continued down past Kødbyen. Traffic was much less heavy here, and when they turned up Saxogade, Louise started to relax.
“They’re going to the club,” she said and started looking for a parking spot. They’d had the Albanian club under surveillance since Pavlína told them about it, but they hadn’t seen any sign of Arian or Hamdi going there. The Audi parked two buildings farther up the street.
“Let me out,” Louise said quickly. “I’ll stay here while you find a parking spot.”
She hopped out of the car just outside the club and busied herself rooting around in her bag while she watched the two Albanians approach her.
They were talking and didn’t look her way. All the same, she pulled back against the wall of the building and turned her face away. Arian sounded angry, as if it were Hamdi’s fault the girl hadn’t shown up. They took the four steps down into the basement club in two bounds and disappeared through the door.
In the brief instant the door was open, Louise saw that there was a fair number of people inside. She smelled smoke and heard conversations. She waited for Lars, who’d found a spot not too far away.
They stepped into a doorway with a good view of the entrance to the basement club. But they realized the view must be just as good from inside the club, so every time the door opened they were sure to back farther into the shadow of the doorway.
“They’ve made us,” Louise confirmed after she noticed a head pop up over the side of the stairwell to look in their direction. “Let’s move over to the other side of the street.”
Three older men deep in conversation walked down the sidewalk and went down the stairs into the club side by side.
“I wonder what they do down there?” Louise said, considering the basement windows covered with faded yellowish curtains.
“Play cards, talk, smoke,” Lars said, and Louise smiled.
“Sounds like just the place for you,” Louise said.
Lars nodded.
“Doesn’t sound so bad to me. Nice to have a place to hang out,” he said. “A woman-free zone with a bar and gambling.”
“They’re playing for money?”
Her partner started laughing.
“What, did you think they were playing Go Fish? I’m betting they sometimes play for quite a bit, but they’re clever enough to use all kinds of codes so there’ll never be money in the clubs if the police stop by.”
He shook his head.
“But that’s true of all clubs, not just the Albanian one,” he hastened to add. “It’s like that in most of the expat clubs we’ve raided.”
“Damn,” Louise exclaimed. “And here I thought they were drinking sweet tea and chatting about old friends and memories. In reality, it’s organized gambling with a bar.”
Two hours had elapsed without any sign of Arian or Hamdi. It was a little past six, and they agreed to return to HQ, where Willumsen was still waiting for them.
They found him in his office, collecting all the information that was still coming in about Kaj Antonsen’s murder. A large team from the downtown precinct was questioning the residents of the buildings surrounding the courtyard, and the first reports from the crime-scene techs had just come. He stood up and cleared the meeting table while Louise went to get Toft and his partner.
“There’s no doubt that those two were up to something that didn’t work out for them,” Toft stated. “We traced the calls made from Arian’s cell phone while we were at the airport, and they all went to a foreign number, which we weren’t able to identify, but the country code was the Czech Republic. So I think we can assume that he was trying to get hold of the Czech contact who was supposed to see the girl off.”
Willumsen nodded. “That’s a good guess, anyway,” he said, eyeing Toft and Stig. “I suggest you do another round at the hotels off Istedgade this evening and see whether anyone knows the two Albanians, but stay on top of what Igli gets out of the wiretap so we make sure we’re keeping up with them.”
They both nodded, and Willumsen glanced quickly at Louise and Lars.
“You two are going to Istedgade,” he ordered. “Get the rundown on the scene so we have some idea how many Eastern European prostitutes are working out there these days.”
He asked Lars to set up one of the department’s small video cameras in his backpack.
“Stroll around and listen to the solicitations you get from the hookers. Keep the camera hidden, obviously, but make sure the lens is unimpeded when the girls talk to you.”
Once Lars nodded that he understood, Willumsen added that he could get someone to help him set it up in his backpack if he had any trouble.
“I’m sure I can figure it out on my own,” Lars was quick to say. He hated going to the techies for help, because they tended to scoff any time there was something the “desk officers” couldn’t handle.
Willumsen had already moved on to Louise.
“You keep an eye on the girls who use the rooms in that porn theater for their customers. We need to identify all of the girls using the booths and, by elimination, the ones who are working for the Albanians. Right now we still don’t know if the Albanians’ girls operate off the street or through a brothel—where they’ll be harder to watch.”
“They’re working off the street,” Louise said, reminding him what Pavlína had told them. “But I’d still like to take a closer look at Club Intim and see whether Arian and Hamdi turn up.”
Willumsen ignored her correction and plowed ahead, undeterred.
“First thing tomorrow, you guys are going to head over to Central Station. We’re going to verify whether the girls meet there every morning to settle their tabs,” he said, still to Louise and her partner.
“If what Pavlína claims is true, then there’s definitely a pattern to it,” Louise said.
“Exactly,” Willumsen said, adding that Mikkelsen had put a few extra uniforms on the streets to keep a lookout for meetings of prostitutes and their potential pimps.
Earlier at the airport, Louise heard that Suhr had asked the downtown precinct for assistance detecting any pattern to identify locations on the Albanians’ “route,” as Arian had called a few specific places in the neighborhood in one of the conversations Igli had translated. Mikkelsen had confirmed that the “route” included at least Istedgade, the streets around Halmtorvet, Sønder Boulevard, and Skelbækgade.
“How about if I start out at Arian’s address early tomorrow morning?” Lars suggested. “Then I’ll be on him as soon as he leaves his apartment, and Louise can head straight to Central Station and be ready if anyone shows up.”
Willumsen nodded and looked at the time before getting up and retrieving his jacket from the coat hook on the back of the door.
“Let me know if anything interesting turns up,” he said, closing his briefcase after he put his jacket on. “I’ll see you two in here early tomorrow,” he said to Toft and Stig. “You guys should also keep up to date on how far the CSI techs have gotten with the evidence from the murder site.”
As the four detectives stood up, the chief was already on his way down the hall with a hand up in the air in a farewell wave.
Stig and Toft offered Louise a ride to Halmtorvet.
“Great,” she said, popping back into her office where her partner was setting up his video c
amera in a backpack.
“Let’s meet at Central Station later, okay?” she said.
20
CAMILLA WAS SITTING IN THE PASTOR’S KITCHEN, WATCHING HIM operate the espresso machine. She was sitting on the bench at the table in an oversize T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans, with no makeup.
“I’m sure they’ll find the people who did it,” Jonas promised in his gravelly voice when he came into the kitchen to say hi to Markus and his mother. “Detective Louise told us that.”
Camilla smiled at Jonas, tenderly running her hand over his hair while he kept his dark, serious eyes trained on her. She knew that Louise was still in touch with the two boys, and she was just as happy to have her friend handle that area of conversation. At the moment, she had her hands full just keeping herself above water.
“Louise also told us to take care of you because you’re so sad about the murder,” her son’s best friend continued, which made Camilla choke up. Otherwise, she had mostly finished crying by this point. She felt a little more relaxed after talking to the psychologist at National Hospital and hearing that she’d been granted the leave she had requested at work.
“Thanks,” she said, giving the hand Jonas had placed on her shoulder a little squeeze before the boy disappeared upstairs with Markus.
Høyer had given her a month off when they’d met at the paper earlier. He served her coffee as they sat on the sofas in the visitors’ interview room and emphasized that the leave was just long enough for her to get back up on her feet.
Camilla had sat across from him, staring as he spoke—it wasn’t what she wanted.
“The leave should be for an unspecified length of time,” she said. “And if I’m not back in three months, I will totally understand if you hire someone else.”
She had already heard he’d pulled someone off the news desk to replace her while she was away, and there would be a new intern starting next week as well.
Høyer had stood up and stepped over to the window with his back to her for several minutes before finally turning around and giving her a look she had trouble interpreting. It was a combination of concern, helplessness, and burgeoning irritation. In the end he gave in, dropping his head in exasperation. But he wanted her permission to call her while she was on leave to check up on her.
She gave him a hug before leaving, because she was brimming with relief.
“I read about Kaj Antonsen in the paper yesterday,” Henrik said, setting a cup of espresso in front of her. “Morgenavisen wrote that you were seeking his next of kin, but from today’s article I take it no one has come forward yet. Did you get hold of his ex, the one who left him when their son died?”
Camilla nodded. “But she didn’t want anything to do with him—as far as she was concerned he had died years ago, when they lost their son. She said he doesn’t have any family, and made it abundantly clear she wanted nothing to do with the funeral. So I thought I’d take care of it myself.”
The pastor sat down across from her. “You don’t need to do that,” he said. “If there isn’t any next of kin, then the Danish government will take care of it.”
Camilla shook her head and said that she didn’t want that. Kaj should have a proper funeral.
“Which is why I wanted to ask if we could hold it here at your church.”
“Certainly,” he said warmly but with a look that said he wondered if she had thought her decision through.
Camilla knew she was going against the sad contemporary trend in Denmark where the next of kin try to get out of arranging funerals for family members to avoid the bill. But she’d thought a great deal about Kaj, and even though they had known each other for only a few hours, she knew she wasn’t doing it merely out of compassion. It was also to ease her own conscience.
“What do you think about holding a funeral service, and then afterward we can inter his urn in the unmarked graves?” Pastor Henrik suggested.
Camilla shrugged. She hadn’t made any decisions on the details and was happy to go along with whatever the pastor recommended as long as Kaj got a proper sendoff. She didn’t think it would fix anything, really—but it just felt right.
Her eyes drifted over to the TV, which was on but muted. The evening news was in the middle of its report on Baby Girl, who had been brought to Skodsborg Orphanage. It had been a week since the boys had found her, and the mother still hadn’t come forward. That meant the baby would probably be put up for adoption. In other words, Skodsborg was just a layover on the little girl’s journey.
One week, Camilla thought. The abandoned baby felt like the distant past already. She wished she could forget everything that had happened since she’d been found.
“Can we play Johnny Cash in church?” she asked, turning from the TV to the pastor and gulping the rest of her espresso.
He smiled and said no one else was helping plan the service to object to that.
Camilla felt herself smiling, and it was liberating to feel something other than the hurt of the past two and a half days.
“There will be a ton of flowers,” she said. “But I don’t think we need to do any singing.”
She sat for a moment, staring off into space.
“I guess I didn’t know him,” she said. “Maybe it’s too much.”
There was a little pause.
“I don’t know if I’m going to go back to writing,” she said softly, leaving the topic of the funeral for a bit. “Before all this, I felt like writing had a kind of legitimacy and gave meaning to the things I did. But it’s pretty damn hard to see it that way now. No news story justifies what happened to Kaj.”
She could see the pastor weighing what he wanted to say next, and she just wasn’t up to listening to anyone else encouraging her to stop feeling guilty, which is why her whole body relaxed when the kitchen door knocker made three loud clunks.
Camilla glanced up at the clock over the sink. Nine fifteen. The boys were still up in Jonas’s room watching a movie or playing computer games. Markus had insisted that it wasn’t too late for him, even though they might not be home until ten at this rate.
There was a young woman standing outside. The same one who had been by on the day the boys found the little girl inside the entrance to the church. The last time she came, she rang the bell at the front door of the pastor’s residence. Now she was standing at the back door, holding out a slip of paper to Pastor Holm.
He glanced at it and shrugged.
“I don’t understand,” he said and invited her in.
It was a warm spring evening outside and yet a cold draft rushed through the kitchen. Henrik pointed to the coffee cups, but the woman stood just inside the door and politely declined.
Camilla didn’t remember the woman being so tall, and this time she had a more insistent look, which was trained on the pastor. Then Camilla remembered that Henrik had asked the woman to come back again after a week.
He apologized and explained that unfortunately he hadn’t been able to find her any work, but offered to keep an eye out and let her know if anything turned up.
The woman shook her head vigorously and pointed at the slip of paper.
He studied it again before passing it to Camilla and asking if she could make out any of what it said.
Pozdrav iz prijatelju. Daj ovoj devojci posao u tvojoj kući, i tvoj dug je plaćen.
Camilla shook her head. She couldn’t make sense of even a single word.
“Looks like Croatian; if it were Serbian it’d be in Cyrillic,” Henrik said. “It’s going to take me some time to translate it. Luckily I have a dictionary from my time in Bosnia.”
He started explaining to the woman again that he couldn’t help her right now.
“Give me your number, and I’ll call you if anything comes up,” he said.
She shook her head and kept pointing at the slip of paper.
Finally the pastor asked her to wait a moment. He turned on a light in the living room next to the bookshelf and returned a moment later with a
worn dictionary and a pair of reading glasses.
Slowly, word by word, he translated the first sentence:
“Give this girl a job in your home, and your debt is paid,” he read after writing the words down on the back of a shopping list. He started on the next sentence, but after a couple of words he pushed the paper away and apologetically shook his head, once again explaining to her that he didn’t need any help with his housework, he preferred to do it himself.
He watched her reluctantly leave the kitchen and start down the back steps.
“What else did it say?” Camilla asked once he was seated at the table again.
Henrik emptied his little coffee cup and pulled the piece of paper over to him, scanning the tall, thin letters.
“It says: ‘Greetings from a friend.’ But of course that could be anyone who knew I used to work down there.”
Camilla asked what it had been like, working in Srebrenica.
“Awful and wonderful,” he said, smiling at her. “Some of the worst things I’ve ever experienced, but also some of the most life-affirming. Once you got used to the darkness, the food, and the mud, you started to see the people. Although it took me quite a while to get to know the people, because they were hiding under so many layers of pain and displacement. It was hard to say who they were—or who they had been.”
Camilla nodded. His words struck a chord, reminding her of something she experienced in the spring of 1998. The year after she had Markus, the Roskilde Dagblad sent her to Kosovo to write a story about a young Danish woman from Lejre who was cleaning up land mines. After the young woman took Camilla and her photographer out into the minefield, they spent that evening in a bar where the woman introduced them to a young man Camilla guessed she was interested in, although she never actually admitted as much. The young man told them a little about his story, which began four years earlier when he returned home one day to find his family’s home ablaze. After neighbors helped put out the fire, they found his father and two brothers on the floor of the kitchen, each shot in the back of the head, and his mother and two little sisters were down in the basement. The basement door had been locked from outside.
