Only One Life

by Sara Blaedel

  Louise had a hard time imagining how they were going to find any room for the extra help they had called in. Earlier, Søren had told her about a case in which they had squeezed an extra detective in at a little schoolhouse-style desk out in the hallway, and another case in which they kept moving a detective around, but this time it wasn’t going to be that bad because right then her old partner emerged from an empty office. He ran his hand through his longish blonde hair as he looked at the weekend bag and two computer bags he had set down on the floor in front of him.

  “Are you moving in?” she asked, walking over to him.

  “It’d probably be smarter to wait until we know who we’ll be working with, but it’d be nice to have a proper place to sit,” he said. At that moment Storm stuck his head out a door at the end of the corridor.

  “Everybody’s meeting in here,” he shouted, waving for them to join him.

  They entered what must have been the division’s conference room, and Louise guessed this was likely where the Criminal Investigation Division normally held their morning briefings. The walls were painted a warm yellow reminiscent of a child’s drawing, with the sun a little too heavy and saturated with color—over the top for a small room, but the light from the tall windows here compensated for the compact feel. In front of one window they had a large whiteboard set up similar to the one they had in the briefing room at the Copenhagen PD, with bits of blue and green lines that the eraser had missed. On another wall there was a large dry-erase calendar next to an enlarged map of the area around Holbæk. Someone had decorated the opposite wall by tacking up a Matisse print, and an overhead projector was tucked away in the corner behind the door. Louise sat next to Søren, grabbing one of the lined legal pads stacked on the table with a few pens, which must have been left over from a previous meeting.

  “I think he’s going to split Mik and Dean up, and you’ll get partnered with one of them,” Søren whispered to her.

  Louise looked at both of them. One would be just as good as the other. It was standard procedure to form teams by mixing local and backup officers, so she wasn’t even going to start hoping for any particular outcome. She had also quickly determined that she was the only woman in the group, so it might well be that the local boys were sitting here wondering about their prospects of being partnered with her. She had heard stories about local police officers calling in sick because they felt invaded when backup suddenly showed up from the Mobile Task Force and started screwing with their routines. Her thoughts were interrupted when Storm started speaking.

  “Nobody has reported the girl missing, so we’ve put out notices to all police districts about the discovery, and we’ll be going to the press with a missing-persons report,” he said, opening the meeting. “Without a photo, initially,” he added. “We’ll stick to describing just the clothes she was wearing when she was found. If that doesn’t turn anything up, we’ll have to release one of the forensic pictures. We just don’t want to risk her parents’ finding out that way,” he said, and several heads in the room shook. “We’ll set up three teams …”

  At that moment the door opened, and a woman with elegant orange hair and red lips came in with a bag over her shoulder and a laptop under her arm.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling.

  “Ruth Lange,” said Storm, gesturing toward her. “Ruth is our administrative assistant.”

  Warm hellos filled the room.

  “Ruth and I will hold down the command center, which will be here in this conference room,” Storm said, pointing at the yellow walls.

  “The teams are as follows,” he continued, once Ruth had set her things on the table and taken a seat. He looked around the room. The local officers were sitting next to each other. Louise was sitting next to Søren Velin, who stood out in his cargo pants and black turtleneck. Skipper was to her left.

  “Skipper and Dean,” said Storm, “you two are responsible for the site where the body was found. In other words, all of the technical evidence.”

  The two men smiled and nodded to each other.

  “Louise Rick and”—he looked down at his papers—“Mik Rasmussen. We’re putting you two together to identify her family and social circle. We’ve got to find out what the motive might be. Rick has some experience working with ethnic minorities,” he continued. Louise furrowed her brow. She wouldn’t have gone that far, but she wasn’t going to correct Storm right now.

  “Bengtsen, you and Søren Velin will handle telecommunications and question potential witnesses in the area.”

  Bengtsen set his pad on the table and nodded in satisfaction.

  Louise guessed it was probably more the telecommunications and any subsequent wiretapping that he was happy about, and not working with Søren, because she had noticed Bengtsen sizing up her former partner. They would make an odd couple, Bengtsen with his tweed and corduroy and Søren with his very casual style.

  People started talking a little across the table, especially Skipper and Dean, who seemed quite happy with each other. Louise smiled at her newly assigned partner, who quickly looked down after having given her a quick nod.

  Storm told everyone to quiet down and took control of the meeting again.

  “We don’t know anything about the victim. Flemming thinks she was dead before she was placed in the water, but he can’t say with any certainty, so we’ll need to wait for the autopsy.”

  Storm got up and pointed at Louise and Mik.

  “And you two will attend the autopsy. I just got off the phone with Frandsen—he’s the head of the Forensics Center in Copenhagen,” he added, in case anyone in the room didn’t know who he was. “He’ll make sure one of his people is ready around one o’clock so the autopsy can get started on time.”

  Bengtsen grunted to show that he was quite familiar with the head of the Forensics Center and that he also knew a CSI tech would be present at the autopsy.

  Louise stood up as Storm gestured at the door.

  “I’ve put in a request for an official car for you,” he told Louise. “You can pick it up when you’re done with the autopsy. And Ruth will make sure to get you set up with your own laptops.”

  She gave him a questioning look at his use of the plural.

  “One laptop for our internal networks and intranet, and one for the general Internet,” he explained.

  Of course they work on two computers, she quickly thought. The Mobile Task Force operated on a heavily firewalled secure police network, but they naturally also had access to the Internet and an open e-mail system. The laptops would be some of the new gear suddenly available to her.

  “You’ll also get one of our cell phones, but keep your own with you so ours isn’t busy when we need to reach you.”

  As though that were going to be a problem, she thought, but she just nodded.

  “We’ll be staying at the Station Hotel, which is just a little ways up the street across from the train station,” he said, pointing out the window. “I hope you’ll be able to make it back from Copenhagen by dinnertime. Afterward we’ll touch base here again and keep working.”

  “Sounds good,” Louise said, following him as he explained that they had cleared out an office she and Mik could share. They stopped outside the empty office where Søren was standing with his things. He had been given a spot in Bengtsen’s corner office, and as he walked past her in the corridor she could tell from the look in his eyes he was quite satisfied with this outcome.

  The room she was going to be working in was small and Spartan. The walls were a dull eggshell color. The desks and two office chairs reminded her of old school furniture, with names and swastikas scratched into the desktops. Mik Rasmussen had already begun to move his things in, but Louise’s area was completely empty. She went in and settled into her chair, from where she watched Mik stock his desk with paper and set out pencils in a handleless mug from a local soccer organization.

  “Do you play?” she asked.

  He looked over at her with a confused expression a
nd then followed her eyes to the mug.

  “I used to play,” he replied curtly. When she kept looking at him, he explained that he had played soccer for several years with the Holbæk Ball & Sports Association.

  “But we never got further than the Sjælland playoffs.”

  “But you don’t play anymore?” she prodded, keeping the grilling going.

  He shook his head.

  “Now I paddle sea kayaks and teach kayaking down at the Rowing Club.”

  Louise smiled at him. At no time during their brief acquaintance had she suspected him of being particularly athletic. He was just too lanky and reserved for her to connect him with any form of outdoor recreation.

  “Do you know when they’re going to notify the media?” she asked. Bengtsen was taking care of that.

  “I doubt it’ll go out right away, but once it does I’m sure it will get a lot of airtime,” he replied, pulling on his windbreaker.

  His accent had a distinctly Sjælland ring to it, which she recognized in her own speech since she’d grown up in Central Sjælland herself. She had worked hard to rid herself of the accent, but sometimes it still reared its head.

  She looked at the clock and, discovering that it was nearly noon, she stood and pulled her bag up over her shoulder. They had to get going.

  “Time to go?” he asked, and she let him lead the way out, through the back entrance to the lot where the squad cars were parked.

  They drove in silence, and it suited her just fine that neither of them felt the need to entertain the other. Gradually, though, the silence got to be too much for her, so she broke it as they drove through Roskilde.

  “Have you worked with the MTF before?” The Mobile Task Force was an elite National Police unit dispatched throughout Denmark to assist local police departments investigating serious crimes.

  He nodded, and Louise explained that she wasn’t permanently assigned and that this was her first case with them.

  The September sun was blinding them, so he pulled the visor down and positioned it carefully before he finally started talking.

  “We had a murder up here a few years ago when they called in the MTF after a few weeks. That was under our old boss, and for that case in particular it probably would have been smart to have called for assistance earlier, because the perp was never found. But that’s not how things run anymore. Now they call in assistance the moment a murder is discovered.”

  There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in his voice.

  “How long have you been a detective?” she asked with interest.

  He did the tally in his head before answering.

  “Eight years, but I’ve been here eleven. I became a uniform right out of the police academy.”

  That confirmed for Louise that he was in his mid-thirties. Actually thirty-six, a year younger than she was.

  “I assume you live in Holbæk?” she said, thinking she sounded like a reporter doing a lengthy interview, although it didn’t seem like it was bothering him.

  “On a farm just outside town. Do you know Holbæk?”

  She nodded and told him that her parents lived not far away and that when she was a teenager she used to spend all her free time at the Alley, one of Holbæk’s nightclubs.

  He turned his head and studied her, and she knew he was wondering whether he had seen her before.

  “Maybe we’ve danced together,” she joked, glad that the conversation was starting to loosen up and take on a less formal tone.

  His eyes were already back on the road, concentrating on a couple of bicyclists. He politely mumbled that if that were the case, he probably would have remembered it.

  She was about to try again, but just then he turned off onto Frederick V Avenue and parked up alongside Fælled Park across from the Pathology Lab. Flemming Larsen was waiting for them when they entered.

  “Åse is already here, so let’s just head up and join her,” he said, starting toward the elevator.

  Louise smiled. Åse was one of her favorites among the forensic pathology staff. Not that Louise was a feminist, but the tiny woman whom Louise initially had taken as fresh out of college and green was in fact extraordinarily competent and thorough. Åse had her very own quiet style whenever she set to work photographing a corpse, moving on to the lesions on the body and internal organs, and it was clear that she considered every detail important. Now she was already ready to go, waiting for them in the little corridor into the autopsy section in her scrubs with blue medical booties carefully secured over her shoes.

  “Well, we meet again,” Louise said.

  Mik went straight into the rear autopsy room, which was commonly called the murder room. It was twice as large as the other rooms where autopsies were performed so there was room for any law enforcement officials who were supposed to observe. Louise and Åse stayed outside talking while they waited for the fingerprint expert who had been called in to finish taking the body’s prints so he could run a comparison on the girl, in the faint hope of identifying her that way. When Flemming asked them to come in, they walked past the line of smaller autopsy stalls where other forensic pathologists were working. They continued to the autopsy room, joining the forensics team in charge of preparing the body and Mik Rasmussen, who was sitting on a stool in one corner with a pad of paper on his knee, ready to take notes when the actual examination got going.

  Louise grabbed another stool and sat next to him. They kept back while Åse pulled her camera out of her camera bag and started taking pictures of the fully clothed corpse from various angles while speaking quietly to Flemming. When she finished the examination, the other forensic techs stepped forward and removed the girl’s clothes. Åse took pictures of each garment separately, and then at last they were ready to start on the external examination.

  During a brief break, Louise stood up and stepped forward to take a close look at the naked girl. She looked so very young. Her long, dark hair lay out over the table; around her neck she was wearing a thin gold chain with a tiny heart. She had no makeup on. Obviously it could have been washed off by the water, Louise thought, but there was no dark residue around her eyes.

  She stepped back again when Flemming and Åse were ready to continue. The coroner reiterated his comments from the examination at the crime scene: “No clear signs of violence, no signs of pathology or specific identifying marks.”

  Mik scooted his stool over to the windowsill on the back wall so he could use it to hold up his notepad, and he wrote extensively as everyone continued speaking behind him. Flemming Larsen also repeated that there were petechiae in and around the victim’s eyes, and then the forensic techs went over every inch of the girl’s body, using an arsenal of cotton swabs to dab for evidence before turning the body over.

  Åse was taking pictures of every detail the whole time. When Flemming finished examining the back of the body, he straightened up.

  “The top left side of the neck shows two yellow, slightly rounded abrasions,” he announced. Åse stepped closer, and together they bent down.

  “These are quite unusual and were sustained after death. I can’t exclude the possibility that they occurred during transportation here,” he said, asking the men standing in the corner by the door to open the girl up.

  Louise stepped out with the others while the forensic techs did their work, finishing half a cup of coffee in Flemming’s office before being called back into the autopsy room.

  The body had been opened with a long, straight cut, and the internal organs had been lifted out in one block and rinsed. Now the last stage of the autopsy could get under way. The light from Flemming’s work lamp that hung from the ceiling by its long arm was intense, reflecting a glare out into the room wherever it struck the white tiles of the end wall and the shiny surfaces of the stainless-steel tables. A long hose hung over the deep sink where the block of organs lay, with the shrill sound of regularly spaced drips whenever a drop of water hit the basin.

  “She is a healthy young woman,” said Flemming, most
ly directing his comments at Mik and his notes. Flemming announced that her last meal had been rice and beans.

  He worked a little more in silence until he continued: “There is no water in the lungs or sphenoidal sinus, so there is no indication that she drowned, but she was underwater for a few hours. She has acute hyperinflation, the lungs are large and pale, which may be because she had difficulty breathing, but I can’t give you a cause of death,” he said, completing the autopsy.

  Everyone said thank you, stepped out, and pulled off their masks and white coveralls. Louise hung back a moment to talk with Flemming before following Mik over to the elevators to head down to the car. They agreed that he would drop her off at the Polititorvet, the large, red-brick neoclassical building that housed the Danish National Police headquarters, where she could pick up the car she had been assigned. Then she planned on stopping by her apartment in Copenhagen’s Frederiksberg neighborhood to pack a bag.

  3

  AFTER LOUISE PACKED A FEW THINGS, SHE DID A QUICK WALK-THROUGH of her apartment with her weekend bag in her hand. She packed both warm- and cold-weather clothes. Even though they were halfway through September, they were still having days so hot that even shorts and T-shirts seemed like overkill.

  Her answering machine was blinking. She pressed PLAY and walked over to the windowsill to grab the vase of flowers she had bought the day before. It would be easy enough to bring the flowers wrapped in a bit of newspaper to her room at the Station Hotel in Holbæk.

  “… you can call any time today. We’re supposed to be getting together tomorrow, and it would be nice to know if we’re all set or if I should just wait on standby until it suits you to call me back! Beeep.”

  Camilla Lind’s voice was cut off by the answering machine’s shrill beeping sound.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Louise said to the machine, reaching for the phone.

  “Hi—and I’m sorry,” she began, heading off Camilla’s initial reproach for her laxness in returning calls. “I’ve got to cancel for tomorrow.”