Only One Life

by Sara Blaedel

  Fatima shook her head, but Asma looked Louise in the eye and said that there were times when Samra wasn’t that happy.

  “Had she been like that lately?” Louise asked.

  Asma shrugged. There was something vulnerable about her, evoked by her provocative sense of style and her covered hair. She didn’t look at all cheap in her tight-fitting clothes, it was more like she radiated a strong sense of feminine elegance, one that she was just way too young to carry off and that wasn’t fully realized because she was hiding one of the most feminine of bodily adornments: her hair.

  “Did Samra say anything to you? She must have needed someone to talk to?” Instead of waiting for an answer, Louise asked the girls whom they talked to when they were sad. “Each other,” all four of them replied.

  Dicta added that she also talked to her parents, and there was nodding all around the table. The others obviously did too, when all was said and done.

  The silence in the classroom was oppressive until Louise asked if anyone thought the family might have been planning a wedding for Samra and that maybe that was what had been making her feel pressured.

  Suddenly everyone was talking over each other.

  “They wouldn’t do that,” Fatima exclaimed loudly and was interrupted by Liv, who exclaimed, “Well, they could just forget about that!”

  “My aunt and uncle aren’t like that,” Asma said, once everyone had calmed down. “They’re not into that kind of thing.”

  “But that’s what you Danes always think about us, isn’t it?” Fatima mumbled angrily.

  “Samra would never have put up with that. She was way too independent to accept a decision like that,” Liv interjected, and the other girls agreed.

  Louise studied Liv for a moment. Liv was hardly the first person Louise would have picked as one of Samra’s closest friends. Her leather jacket was worn, and the red T-shirt with the black dots she wore underneath it was faded. Louise couldn’t figure out whether the girl’s hair was standing up in stiff tufts because it was beyond greasy or if she’d painstakingly achieved this look with multiple hair products. It was hard to tell what color the girl’s eyes were behind all that thick black eyeliner.

  “Well, good, we’ll forget about that then,” Louise said. “Do you think Samra would have sneaked out of the house at night without telling her parents?” she asked instead.

  Both Dicta and Liv nodded, while Asma and Fatima took a little longer to contemplate the idea before they also acknowledged that she might well have done that. “Samra’s parents usually went to bed around ten, because her father had to get up early,” one of the girls added.

  “Who would she have gone to visit if it wasn’t one of you guys?”

  This time there was no rapid outburst of answers.

  “She was very cautious,” Liv said, pulling her leather jacket tighter around her, as if she were a little uncomfortable talking and having the others’ full attention. “If they found out, her father would have been furious and then she would have been grounded for several months.”

  Dicta agreed with Liv and said that Samra had been grounded a few times in the past.

  “You can’t just fucking do that! I dare my parents to even try such a thing,” Liv said, her tone indignant. And Louise could easily imagine that they wouldn’t easily get away with that.

  “Her parents hadn’t seen her since her mother said good night to her Tuesday evening. They thought she’d gone to school the next morning. But by the time the alarm clock rang at eight Wednesday morning, Samra was already lying out in Udby Bay.”

  Louise knew it would be hard on them to hear her say it so matter-of-factly, but she felt she needed to shake them up a little. They weren’t giving her anything, and she had to get them talking if she was going to have any chance of making headway.

  “Did she show up at any of your homes on Tuesday night?” Louise asked, and she was prepared when all four of them shook their heads. “Did any of you go out gallivanting with her and you’re not mentioning it now because your parents can’t find out?”

  Her voice had become sharp, and she noted the look the teacher shot at her, but she didn’t stop. She carefully studied the young girls to determine what was going on behind their expressionless faces, but none of them seemed to be trying to cover up a lie.

  “She must have disappeared in the evening or at night,” Dicta said softly, when the silence became unbearable.

  Louise had the sense that a wall was being erected between the group of girlfriends, and it wasn’t hard for her to figure out what they were divided over. Accusers on one side and defenders on the other. Against the family and for the family. She was also afraid to put any words in their mouths, but they were dealing with facts here and she had to confront them with those. If anyone could come up with an alternative chain of events, they were more than welcome to do so.

  “I already asked Dicta. But now I’m asking the rest of you if you know whether she had a boyfriend or a friend whom she saw in secret.”

  Louise was ready for loud protests from Fatima and Asma and looked at them in surprise when they just shrugged and said there wasn’t anyone they were aware of. Dicta repeated that there hadn’t been anyone.

  “You wouldn’t know shit about it,” Liv remarked caustically to Dicta. “The only thing anyone can talk to you about is your hair and your advertising jobs.”

  “Modeling jobs,” Dicta corrected her.

  “I just mean it’s not like Samra would have wanted to tell you anything—if there was anything to tell—since you’re always off in your own egocentric universe.”

  Louise considered interrupting, but before she had a chance, Dicta managed to do so herself.

  “Give it a fucking break already,” Dicta swore. “I don’t think I spend any more time on my hair than you do, so just drop it.”

  Louise’s eyebrows were halfway up her forehead. There was something out of place about a rant like that spewing out of Dicta’s pretty young mouth, but it was effective. Louise had obviously misjudged her. And it surprised her just as much that Liv took it without any kind of comeback.

  “Do you know something?” Louise asked, directing her question directly at Liv. She had made it sound like she did.

  “I don’t know what it was, but I think there was something,” Liv replied cryptically.

  “Well, how about a few more details, please!” Louise’s tone was a little harsh, harsher than she’d intended, and again she noticed a look from the girls’ teacher, who wished to protect her students.

  Liv shook herself, as if she had promised more than she could deliver. The young black-haired rebel oscillated between feigned bluntness and paralyzing insecurity, which once again caused her to pull her leather jacket tighter around herself. But actually there was nothing flippant about her charm, Louise noted, studying Liv with interest as she began her response.

  “I don’t know anything about any boyfriend,” Liv explained, “but it’s very clear that there was something. Something had hurt her, she had been upset, something had been painful.”

  Dicta looked skeptical.

  “Well, I certainly didn’t notice that,” Dicta said, looking over at Fatima and Asma. “Did you guys?”

  “Maybe, but not the way you mean,” Fatima told Liv. “I think she seemed happy, as if she had butterflies in her stomach.”

  Louise looked at each of the girls in turn. This was almost worse than no information at all, she thought. Everyone was going off in a separate direction.

  “At some point did she maybe confide something in one of you?” Louise asked, hoping that her last question was down-to-earth enough and suitably open and naïve that maybe it would appeal to something in their teenage compulsion to confide in someone. But all four of them shook their heads.

  Louise thanked them for their time and for the information they’d given her. She said good-bye to Jette Petersen and thanked her for her help as well. Then she left Højmark School to drive back to the police st
ation with the sense that she hadn’t gotten very far.

  15

  “IKNOW YOU USED TO CALL THE SCHOOL OFFICE AND ASK ABOUT your sister if she was even just ten minutes late coming home from school. And now you’re claiming you don’t know shit about what she liked to do?”

  Louise heard the voice through the door, just as she was about to enter her office. She stopped, quickly realizing that her partner’s plan of maintaining a more convivial tone hadn’t gone so well. Louise considered going to the command room to wait until Mik was done questioning Samra’s brother, but ended up standing there in the hallway for a bit while Hamid heatedly defended himself and claimed it was all a bunch of lies.

  “You used to follow her on your moped when she walked home after visiting her friends. Am I making that up too, or shall we accept that as credible since Dicta Møller’s parents say they saw you several times?”

  Louise ducked out again before Hamid had a chance to answer. She knew Mik had the upper hand. Samra’s classmates had already described several incidents to Louise confirming that Hamid had indeed followed his sister.

  Louise went in to see Ruth and sat down with a cola in her hand. “How did it go when Mik questioned the parents?” she asked, hoping that he’d gotten a little more out of them than she had from her visit to the school.

  Ruth leaned back in her chair and pressed her cherry-red lips together, placing her hands behind her head and pushing her ample orange mop of hair upward to form a crown over her head. A look of annoyance slid over her face.

  “To put it mildly,” Ruth said, “this has not been a good day. Storm decided to leave us.” Then she explained that the mood had been rather tense after the day’s questioning sessions. The administrative assistant leaned forward slightly, letting her hair fall back into place.

  “Ibrahim al-Abd has started waffling about what time he came back from the marina Tuesday night and when his brother went home. If Storm had had time to attend to his responsibilities here, maybe he could have forced through a detention order for the father, but the deputy police commissioner didn’t think we had enough to hold him.”

  “Couldn’t you just call Storm on his cell?” Louise asked.

  Ruth irritably shook her head. “He’s not picking up and hasn’t responded to the messages I’ve left. Maybe giving his PowerPoint presentation down there will eventually earn him another star on his lapel further up the ladder somewhere, but he’d be doing a hell of a lot more good right now if he were here.”

  Louise pictured the look on Samra’s father’s face when they’d told him about his daughter. “If we forget about statistical probabilities and everything we have to go by so far, I’d say I’m reasonably sure the father didn’t know it was his daughter’s body that had been found,” Louise said. “It would be almost impossible to fake the appearance of despair and impotence he gave off.”

  The administrative assistant shrugged.

  “They haven’t given us a thing—either the mother or the father—that would give us the slightest reason to cross them off the list of suspects. One minute the father is yelling and screaming and making a big scene because the police suspect him of having something to do with his daughter’s death, and the next he’s refusing to say anything about the family’s acquaintances and what Samra had been up to in recent weeks. He’s completely shut down. The mother cried most of the time and didn’t say anything that could lead us further. We let them go, and we’ll have to see what Storm says whenever he finally gets back,” Ruth said.

  “Are you going to be in town this weekend?” Mik Rasmussen asked after he’d said good-bye to Hamid, who had given the policeman a very obstinate look and an almost invisible nod before quickly scurrying away.

  Louise nodded. Before Storm left, he had made it clear that everyone was going to be staying in town over the weekend. Not that he was expecting all that much to happen, but he wanted to be able to call in his troops if there was a sudden breakthrough. It didn’t bother Louise. She was in no hurry to go home to her empty apartment.

  “I’m teaching a sea kayaking class for beginners tomorrow,” Mik said. “If you want to give it a try, stop by.”

  Louise stared at him blankly. “Sea kayaking?” she repeated.

  Mik nodded and smiled at the look on her face. “We go out on the sound,” he explained. “It’s amazing. I think you’d actually really like it.”

  Louise started laughing. “And just what makes you think that? It sounds strenuous, cold, and wet. Definitely not something for me.”

  “You wear a wet suit, so you won’t get cold when you’re in the water,” he countered. “Besides, you don’t need to paddle all the way out to the Sjællands Odde peninsula on your first trip.”

  “Isn’t this a little late in the year to start kayaking?” she asked, trying to shoot down the idea, but her partner brushed that aside, explaining that as long as they were wearing wet suits, they could keep going until well into October.

  She stood there for a moment, watching him as he gathered his papers into a neat pile. Then he shut down his computer and said he was heading home to do the next feeding.

  “Feeding?” she asked. Now she was totally in the dark.

  He explained that one of his hunting dogs, a black Lab, had had puppies who were three weeks old now and that the mother needed all the food she could eat so she could produce enough milk for them. Which is why he had to go home several times a day.

  Suddenly things made sense, and she had to smile.

  “The Rowing Club is behind Hotel Strandparken,” Mik said on his way out the door.

  She waved after him, but her cell phone rang just then; and when she saw that it was Camilla, she pushed the office door shut a little with her foot before answering.

  “I don’t think we’ll be working that late tonight,” Louise answered after her friend asked if she had an estimate for when she’d be done.

  “There’s a restaurant down by the harbor that looks promising. Let’s meet there at eight. I’ll have my articles turned in by then,” Camilla said. “Maybe some of the others would like to join us. You guys can’t keep hanging out at the Station Hotel, and it’s usually pretty easy to tempt Søren Velin into tagging along.”

  Louise had no doubt he could be tempted. When they’d worked together in Unit A, Søren had been known as a joiner. She headed down the hall to find him and hadn’t even finished talking before he’d suggested they start with a beer at the brewpub before heading to dinner. Skipper stopped as he walked by and asked what time they were meeting.

  “Who’s going to convince Bengtsen?” Louise asked, heading down the hall to see if Dean had left yet.

  “I will,” said Ruth, who had appeared in the hallway without Louise’s noticing her.

  Suddenly Louise had the impression that the prospect of a little socializing had improved everyone’s mood. They’d all been buried in work since the group had been formed. Now people’s voices sounded more upbeat.

  They all had more than one beer at the little brewpub, which was in walking distance from the hotel, and when they made it down to the nice restaurant by the harbor they agreed it probably wasn’t the best fit for them. They were well past the point where appetizers and quiet conversation were what they wanted. So they decided on a nearby Indian restaurant instead. The group was a little too big for the one table that was available, so they all had to squeeze to fit, but that didn’t seem to bother anyone. Not even Bengtsen, who had ordered an orange soda at the brewpub to begin with, although that had only lasted until Camilla stuck a foamy draft beer into his hand.

  Louise sat crushed between Skipper and Søren, and she was well entertained because Skipper pulled his iPod out of his pocket and started showing off his knowledge of fusion jazz. She listened with concentration, trying to hear the tranquillity in the notes, but kept getting thrown off because the music kept switching tempo and style. She noticed that he smiled whenever she grimaced periodically.

  “Do you like i
t?” he asked.

  She felt like she’d been caught and shrugged her shoulders a little.

  He said a lot of people felt that way about this kind of music; they either loved it or hated it. The people who loved it took pleasure in the unpredictable notes, and the ones who weren’t captivated described it as irritating noise. He explained that he’d been in a band when he was younger.

  “Now we just mess around for fun, whenever I get together with a couple of the other old guys back home in Svendborg.”

  Louise turned to look straight at him and really had a hard time picturing him with a saxophone in his mouth. Skipper was in his mid-thirties and in great shape, muscular in an outdoorsy way. It was much easier to picture him with a golf club or a fishing pole, now that she thought about it.

  Søren ordered another bottle of red wine while Ruth and Camilla made Dean retell a story that had made them erupt in raucous laughter, so that everyone else could hear it too.

  “Shortly after I arrived in Denmark, I was living in a refugee center in Lyngby,” Dean began, getting everyone’s attention. “And if I have anything funny to say about that period it was that we discovered that on the door to the boss’s office it said Peder Pedersen. Because where I come from, Peder means gay. So you can appreciate why all the kids laughed every time they saw him and the rest of us had a little trouble taking the head of the refugee center seriously. The guy resigned after just two weeks.”

  The laughter spread around the table and Søren generously refilled people’s wineglasses.

  When they were having coffee after dinner, Ruth got a call from Storm, who had just returned to the Station Hotel. For a second it sounded like he was considering joining the party, but that was only until Ruth made it clear to him in succinct, unambiguous terms how irritated she was that he hadn’t been there doing his job when they’d needed him.

  Louise followed the conversation from the other side of the table and smiled, thinking that it must have taken years of working together closely for Ruth to achieve such a sharp tone without his taking it the wrong way. Louise was yanked out of her musings when Skipper spoke to her.