Only One Life

by Sara Blaedel

  Louise thought for a minute that he’d fainted and moved over to him. For a brief instant she saw Mik standing out in the hallway with Hamid, ready to walk him down to the uniforms downstairs so the arrest could be processed.

  “I have to ask you to follow me,” she said quietly, watching him as he slowly collected himself and stood up.

  Neither the father nor the son said anything as their names were entered in the arrest log and they were searched, their possessions placed in clear plastic bags.

  “We’ll walk you over to the jail,” Louise said, holding the door for them. Ibrahim had kept his eyes on the ground, but when he was even with Louise, he raised his head and gazed right into her eyes with a profoundly unhappy, silent look, as he almost imperceptibly shook his head.

  Two officers were waiting in the jail to accept the men. They said hello to Mik and nodded at her. Before they took Ibrahim and Hamid away, Louise stopped them and walked over to the two arrestees.

  “If there’s anything you want to say, just ask to come talk to Mik Rasmussen or me,” she said and then watched them as they started walking down the hallway toward the jail cells.

  Louise and Mik returned to their office and started reading through all the previous transcripts of questioning sessions with the family members before they started with the father and son again.

  It was only just seven when the deputy chief of police walked into the office and said he wanted to order a preliminary examination that same day so they could get it over with.

  Louise was up out of her desk chair so fast that it shot backward and slammed into the wall.

  “Out of the question,” she said, giving him a stern look. “We need the full time, and we have twenty-four hours for the questioning we need to get through.”

  Mik was also standing, but he said nothing.

  The deputy chief paced back and forth a little bit before he leaned against the wall and looked from Mik to Louise.

  “I read the whole thing and I’m not sure I have enough to keep them in custody,” he finally said.

  Louise pulled her chair back to her desk and sat down.

  “But this isn’t a presentation of the evidence. You just need to convince the judge that there is reason to suspect that if we let them out, they could sync up their explanations and sway other people,” Louise said and referenced section 762 (1), paragraph 3. “Now just give us a little peace to do our work.”

  The deputy chief hesitated. “Fine. We’ll hold off on the preliminary examination until tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “But by then, I will also expect you to have something more for me.”

  31

  AT TEN PAST EIGHT THE FOLLOWING MORNING, THE GROUP WAS once again gathered in the command room. There was a carafe of coffee, and Velin had stopped by the bakery on his morning jog to make sure there were some Danishes too.

  “We’re going to search the family’s home again,” Storm began, once they had all helped themselves. It was obvious that there’d been a break in the case, but at the same time the mood was tense and focused. The deputy chief of police had stopped by again to make it clear that he would appreciate it if they had a little more for him before he had to appear for the preliminary examination, but Storm had calmly said that if the man just had faith that the case would hold, then he already had enough.

  Now Storm looked at Skipper and Dean. “Go through everything, you two,” he said. “And you should tear things apart. We need something more to connect the family to Dicta Møller’s murder and we have to find the murder weapon.”

  They received a brief description of the presumed weapon with the two distinctive rounded protrusions that Dicta had been hit with. According to Flemming Larsen, it had to have a certain heft.

  “The crime-scene technicians finished at the site yesterday, and two of them will join you out at Dysseparken,” Storm continued.

  “Do we know that the murder location is the same as where the body was found?” Mik asked, looking at Skipper and Dean, who had helped process the parking lot.

  “Yes, there’s no doubt about that. She was bleeding so much, we would have found traces of blood other places in the parking lot if she’d been transported there,” Skipper said.

  “It’s sheer coincidence that no one saw the attack,” Dean said, shaking his head. “It was so violent.”

  “It may also be a coincidence that it happened right there,” Storm said, repeating that it was still his guess that there had been strong emotions associated with it.

  “Rage,” Louise suggested.

  Storm nodded.

  Bengtsen briefly cleared his throat and then said, “Could that young girl have tried to use what she knew to pressure Samra’s family? Just a thought. But maybe that could have been the provocation?”

  Everyone around the table went silent, trying to picture that.

  “What the fuck did she want to get out of it?” Skipper asked.

  “I couldn’t say. But if Dicta felt sure that Samra’s family had murdered her friend, we certainly can’t rule out that she confronted them with her suspicion. Maybe the brother, whom she knew better than the parents.”

  Storm shrugged.

  Louise’s first impulse was that the theory was way out there, but on second thought she decided not to say anything because ultimately she just couldn’t figure out what had been going on in Dicta’s head. If she had sent her own pictures in to Ekstra Bladet, she had already stepped well beyond what Louise would have imagined she would do; and she had also sneaked off to Copenhagen and gone traipsing around with a much older man without filling anyone in on her adventures.

  Seen in that light, it was very hard to dismiss the idea that it might have occurred to her to use what she knew against the family. If she had done that, it surely wouldn’t have been to pressure them, Louise thought, but to let them know that she knew something and it wouldn’t have been very well thought out. It just made the picture of an immature, naïve young girl all the more clear. All in all, that fit quite well with the Dicta who’d shown new sides of herself during the time Louise had known her.

  “We can’t rule out that she was seeking justice for her friend’s death, if Samra had confided something to her, and she may well have confronted Hamid with it,” Louise said, reminding them that even the first time she’d appeared at the police station, Dicta had expressed her concern about the family’s role in connection with Samra’s disappearance. “Maybe she hoped she could get them to turn themselves in.”

  “That’s not a bad theory. Let’s bring them in from the jail so we can proceed again,” Storm said, wrapping up the meeting.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Camilla shouted heatedly when she burst into Louise and Mik’s office five minutes later. With no makeup on and her bed-head hair gathered into a loose ponytail, she stood flinging her arms around, wearing gray sweatpants and a sweater, which was enough to show that she’d come darting out of her hotel room the second she got off the phone. No doubt that was also the reason Mik didn’t recognize her right away, even though he’d seen her before. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been dressed the way her vanity required her to be: in a skirt, shoes with impressive heels, a little form-fitting jacket, and perfect makeup. Louise had never understood how Camilla could stand to put all that on just to go to work, but that was one of the discussions they had that never got anywhere, in the same way Louise could never make her friend understand how she could leave her apartment without makeup.

  “Are you people stupid, or what?” Camilla railed on, now that she had decided Mik wasn’t going to throw her out. “What are you trying to achieve?”

  Her loud yells had brought Storm to the doorway, where he stood listening, without Camilla having noticed.

  “Good morning, Ms. Lind,” he said with a smile when Camilla finally spun around and stared at him crossly.

  She stepped toward him. “Are you getting desperate? Or are some guys higher up starting to breathe down your necks?” she aske
d, glaring at him.

  The lead investigator seemed to be enjoying this, and on some level Louise was impressed at her friend’s courage, because crime-beat reporters depended on being on good terms with guys like Storm. At the same time, Louise was also embarrassed for her. Camilla could act as if she owned the Danish media, and on many occasions that was far from flattering. But she did have a point.

  “You must see how you’ll look if you end up having to release them,” Camilla told Storm.

  Storm was looking serious again and asked if it might not be a good idea for Camilla to join him for a quick cup of coffee. Louise didn’t have trouble figuring out that it didn’t particularly serve Storm’s interests that news of the arrests had leaked out, since he wasn’t sure yet that the judge would allow the two men to be kept in custody.

  Louise looked over at Mik.

  “What just happened?” he asked.

  If he had been a comic-book character, his jaw would have been hanging down to the floor, Louise thought and smiled at him.

  “Camilla’s right,” she finally said after sitting a moment in silence. “If the judge lets them go, we’re in for a trip through the wringer because it’ll look like the arrests were based solely on racial profiling.”

  Mik sat up straighter.

  “But we actually did arrest them based on something,” he reminded her. “And we can’t go overboard on the political correctness just to protect our reputations,” he continued, irritated.

  Louise sat for a moment before saying she didn’t agree. She was just trying to provide her best guesstimate about how things would look if the judge let Ibrahim and Hamid go.

  “We have enough to keep them in custody,” Mik said tersely and asked if they should get started on the questioning so the deputy chief would feel prepared when he presented the arrestees to the judge.

  Louise nodded and got up. She glanced at him over her desk as she gathered up her papers and acknowledged that now was not the time for them to lose their nerve.

  Camilla was still worked up when she left the police station. She went back to the hotel and had breakfast in the restaurant. She was seated at a table by the window, looking over at the train station, when she spotted Sada, who was trudging toward the hotel with her eyes down, holding hands with Aida and Jamal. Camilla got up and went out to greet her, and with her arm around the slender woman’s shoulder and Aida’s little hand in hers, she brought them into the restaurant.

  “Have you had anything to eat?” Camilla asked, looking at the kids, pointing into the next room where the continental breakfast buffet was still set up. Camilla had ordered à la carte because she hadn’t felt up to sitting with all the other hotel guests, mostly consisting of German and Danish tradesmen, who populated the hotel on weeknights. Camilla had only seen Samra’s little sister once before. That had been the time she had almost been thrown out of the family’s apartment by an enraged Ibrahim, but apparently that hadn’t had any negative impact, because now the little girl smiled and handed Camilla her doll.

  “Oh, for me?” Camilla said, smiling back.

  Aida nodded and followed Camilla’s suggestion to go in to the buffet, even though her mother and little brother were seated at the window table and appeared satisfied with cups of tea.

  Camilla wasn’t used to little girls, but she just couldn’t resist this one. Her heart went all soft when Aida looked at her with those delightful, kind dark eyes.

  Sada gasped when she saw two large pastries on her daughter’s plate, but she didn’t say anything. Not even when Aida climbed up onto a chair next to Camilla instead of sitting by her mother and Jamal. Sada just sat there looking down and stirring her tea.

  “They’re going to end up in jail,” she said finally, setting down her spoon.

  Camilla really wanted to comfort her and said that nothing was certain until they’d seen a judge, but at the same time she said that she’d been by the police station to find out what had made them decide to make the two arrests.

  “They found your daughter’s diary at Dicta Møller’s house,” Camilla said.

  Storm hadn’t told her much beyond the fact that the diary seemed to connect the two cases.

  “Haven’t they told you anything?” Camilla asked when Sada didn’t react to the information.

  “The police say that they’re not coming home right now,” Sada said, arms desperately wrapped around herself, as if she were trying to warm up her fingers. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

  Camilla wished she could reassure the woman, but that might be raising false hopes.

  “Couldn’t you tell me what you think the police might have read in Samra’s diary? They wouldn’t arrest two men if they didn’t have a reason to,” she said.

  Sada didn’t say anything, but Camilla had the sense that she was struggling internally and that it was a battle in which doubt and trust were playing major roles.

  “I don’t know anything,” she finally said and took a little sip of her tea.

  Aida had finished both pastries and her mother pulled a sketch pad and a box of puzzle pieces from her purse and spread out a small blanket on the floor and asked Aida and Jamal to sit down and play.

  Without objections, the girl went over to her mother and took the things her mother handed her, and a second later the two kids were both busy down on the blanket. That would never have worked with Markus, Camilla thought.

  “Do you know what this might have to do with Dicta Møller?” Camilla persisted, even though she was afraid of putting too much pressure on Sada.

  “They were friends,” came the answer.

  “You mean that your daughter might have confided in her friend?” Camilla fished. That was also her guess at the police’s connection.

  Again there was a nod.

  It was hard to tell if Sada was telling the truth or if she didn’t dare divulge what her daughter had been hiding. But now at least she admitted that there had been something.

  “Let’s try to think about it from the police’s perspective. Are they assuming it was an honor killing?” Camilla started, asking Sada to think through what might have triggered Ibrahim’s rage. She had a strong hunch that deep down inside, Sada was afraid her husband’s temper had gotten away from him and that in a fit of rage he had killed their daughter, but Sada categorically rejected that.

  “That kind of thing never happens as long as no one outside the family knows about what took place,” Sada slowly explained, as if she were trying to select each correct word individually. “My daughter didn’t do anything that our family is aware of.”

  Camilla asked her to explain that a bit more clearly.

  “When girls are killed, it’s because you can’t defend the family’s honor to the rest of the family—I mean, the extended family.”

  Sada reached out for Camilla’s white paper napkin and asked to borrow a pen.

  She drew a little circle.

  “This is my immediate family, at home on Dysseparken.” Then she made a larger circle around that. “This is the rest of our extended family who live in Denmark,” she explained.

  Yet another ring around those.

  “This is the entire extended family back home in Rabba.”

  She looked earnestly at Camilla and set the tip of the pen down on the outer circle.

  “When the extended family knows there are problems with a daughter, they will want you to get her under control. If you can’t do that, things can turn out badly.”

  She moved the pen in to the innermost circle.

  “We loved our daughter. If there are problems, then you help your child. Things don’t turn out badly here.”

  Camilla tried to follow. “What you’re saying is that the rumor that something is wrong has to make it further than this small nuclear family before it would result in an honor killing?”

  Sada nodded.

  “And the problems that involved Samra weren’t something that anyone outside your immediate family knew about?�
��

  Sada shook her head, apparently not realizing that by doing so she was confirming that there had been problems. She stood up quickly and packed up her daughter’s playthings as she thanked Camilla for the tea.

  “I can’t make them understand,” Sada said on her way out the door.

  Camilla sat there lost in her thoughts for a long time. She didn’t doubt that Sada felt trapped in the prejudices about the culture she came from, and somewhere deep down inside she also seemed to feel unsure of what she herself should think about Samra’s fate.

  As Camilla left the restaurant a little while after that, a crowd of teenagers on the other side of the street caught her eye. They had surrounded Sada and her children, who hadn’t made it to the bus stop yet but were trapped in front of the large train station building.

  Camilla ran out the door and marched over to the group. Once she had pushed her way through, she positioned herself between the crowd and Sada, and made it loud and clear that if they did not leave this family alone, she would call the police faster than they could repeat the T in towelhead, which was just one of the words she’d overheard them using.

  Instead of dissipating as Camilla had hoped, the teens started aggressively closing in. They were somewhere between sixteen and eighteen years old, she guessed, and their anger at Samra’s mother hung like a thick cloud around them.

  “Girl killer!” one of the boys hissed at Sada as she and her kids started backing away from the group. Word of the arrests had spread quickly and, in a small town like Holbæk, the response was quite evident.

  Camilla heard Aida crying and, outraged, she stepped up to the group’s apparent ringleader.

  “What the hell are you doing, you little prick?” she snarled, sensing more than seeing how a couple of the boys jumped. She whipped her press pass out of her purse.

  “If one of you has a beef you want to get off your chest, then I would love to hear it. Bring it to me, not to a woman walking down the street with her children. That’s just pathetic.”

  Camilla overheard some of them mumbling that she ought to “shut her ass” and quit butting in where she didn’t belong, and she ignored a shove to her left shoulder. She maintained eye contact with the boy she had spoken to.