Call Me Princess (13 page)

Markus was off packing the toys he wanted to bring.

“He asked if I’d rather meet at a café, but it’s a little less formal if he comes here,” she said, putting a bottle of tonic water into the fridge to chill.

“Since you’re meeting for the first time, don’t you think it would be wise to meet somewhere public with other people around?” Louise suggested, almost knowing what would come next.

Camilla sprinkled flour on the kitchen counter and was rolling out some puff pastry with a rolling pin when she turned around. “You know I have written several pieces about the safety tips SafeChat.dk recommends you follow when you meet someone you’ve only had contact with online,” she said with a joking scowl. “So nice to know you read my articles.”

She kept rolling until the puff pastry couldn’t be stretched any further.

“Well, since you’ve written about them, I would think you’d follow them!” Louise tried, having a hard time seeing how the one thing precluded the other.

“Those safety rules are meant for children and teenagers: ‘Don’t meet someone you met online without telling a grownup.’ I
am
a grownup, so I’ve been told, and I can just shoo him out the door if he’s up to no good,” she continued.

Louise was in no doubt about Camilla’s ability to shoo men out, but it still sounded risky to her.

Camilla opened the fridge and took out a jar of Glyngøre lumpfish caviar. With a teaspoon, she placed dollops onto the puff pastry at regular intervals and then rolled it up like a jelly roll before cutting it into thin slices, which she laid out flat, like danishes, on a baking sheet.

“Should I bring my video games?” Markus shouted from his room.

“Take your Game Boy so you’ll have it for the drive,” Camilla answered. “Besides,” she said to Louise, “he’s just coming over for a drink. We’re going out to dinner tomorrow night; but if it turns out there’s no spark there, then we can skip the dinner.” She opened the oven and put the baking sheet in, then she quickly glanced at her watch and asked if Louise and Markus shouldn’t be going.

Louise smiled and called out to Markus.

Camilla was getting out her hair dryer when Markus ran into the bathroom to say good-bye to her while Louise stood there holding his bag over her shoulder, waiting until they were done with their good-byes.

“Can I sit in front?” Markus asked when they got down to the car.

Louise gave him a smile and tousled his hair. “We’ll have none of that, young man. You know I’m a police officer,” she said, making her voice sound very authoritative.

He bowed his head in a theatrical sulk and opened the back door. His whole goal had been getting her to say that she was a police officer. It surprised her a little that he still thought that was a big deal, and she thought she really ought to enjoy her rock-star status for as long as it lasted.

—

M
ARKUS WAS LYING ON
L
OUISE’S SOFA WATCHING CARTOONS ON
TV while she got out their plates and her travel bag. She hadn’t been planning on taking much at first, but her mother had called and said that she wanted to take the opportunity of Louise’s upcoming visit to get the whole family together, so she’d invited Louise’s brother and sister-in-law and their two children. Louise decided, if the whole family was going to be there, that they’d need some extra clothes.

She thought fleetingly about Karsten Flintholm and could still hear him gloating—really taunting—that she was going to have to let him go. It was bugging her because she was usually pretty good at leaving her “work hat” at work and not bringing it home with her. She’d picked up the technique from a training seminar for homicide detectives and investigators. The “imaginary work hat” helped people who tended to dwell on their cases even when they were off work. In the beginning she’d had a hard time getting used to this new technique, but now it had become a ritual for her, one she quite unconsciously relied on at times when brutal crimes might otherwise linger in her thoughts overnight. Thoughts of Susanne Hansson and “Mr. Noble” were soon placed far into the recesses of her mind as she went to the kitchen to get a bag of candy and returned to the living room to watch TV with Markus.

Later, she only just barely heard Peter come home. Markus had been asleep for ages, and she had also fallen asleep. She noticed the mattress yield to his body as he cautiously lay down, taking care not to wake her. She reached over and found his hand, but wasn’t able to climb out of the tight embrace sleep held her in.

S
HE SAW IT COMING BUT COULDN’T PULL HER ARM BACK IN.
H
E
was too fast as he positioned his weight over her back and then pressed down until she couldn’t breathe. She gasped as she heard something snap in her shoulder. The pain was so intense that her muscles quivered.

He gripped her left arm tightly and tugged her back so that she rolled onto her stomach. Pinned underneath his body, she went limp and her muscles relaxed.

“Lie still.”

His voice was so close to her ear that a stream of air filled her ear canal.

She noticed that his weight eased up slightly off her back as he leaned over to get a better grasp of the arm under her. She quickly flipped over onto her back, and he lost his balance as she pulled both legs up and kicked him as hard as she could. The impact when she hit him sent a jolt through her body. He reflexively grabbed hold of her ankles. It felt like a knife cutting in deep as he cinched the cable ties.

She instinctively scratched at him before she began hitting out whenever he was close enough. His cheek was bleeding, and she noticed the aggression radiating out of his dark eyes and prepared herself for another blow.

She had vaguely sensed that something was wrong, but had nonetheless ignored the warning signs. He had been attentive and courteous. She had found it strange all along that he didn’t want to exchange pictures, but she had taken that as a compliment, since he had written in one of his first e-mails that he could tell she was different from the others. He could tell that from the tone of her e-mails.

A reproachful voice popped up in the back of her mind and mixed with the fear: You were playing with fire. Fight!

She had been enjoying it; she’d flirted. It had been titillating and exciting to write back and forth, looking forward to their first meeting.

She screamed as he tied her wrists together, and kept on screaming as he pushed her down onto the floor. The fitted sheet had come off on one side. She had seen the transformation happen when at one point she had taken control in the bedroom. It had turned her on that he was so nervous, so hesitant and slow in taking off his clothes.
A diamond in the rough,
she teased him in her mind, as he stood next to the bed fumbling with his shirt buttons.

“Here, let me,” she had said affectionately once she had taken off her own clothes. She started undoing his buttons, and that’s when she noticed him change. Something had settled in between them like a chill in the air she was breathing. He stood motionless as she slowly undressed him.

She had smiled at him as he pushed her onto the bed, not seeing what he was hiding in his hand. She thought it was a condom that he was too embarrassed to let her see. Now she realized it had been the sharp bands that he used around her ankles and wrists.

She struggled further onto the floor until he yanked her back up, intending to push her down onto the mattress. She managed to keep her balance on her tightly bound legs and with tremendous force she swung her arms at him. The blow knocked him down, and she was afraid the rage she had ignited in him would kill her.

The silence following their struggle hung thick in the bedroom as he sat, just in his boxers, straddling her chest and arms and forced something hard into her mouth. He reached over for the roll of duct tape he had set on the bed as she lay there on the floor, and bit off a piece of tape as she writhed beneath him. She felt his sexual arousal distinctly, and noted to her own astonishment that the fight had also left her own groin quivering and tingling. This helped her relax a little, thinking it would be over soon. It was a game that was exciting to both of them. She had just underestimated him; she hadn’t thought he’d be into this kind of thing, and they hadn’t gone through the rules of the game because she had started undressing him too quickly. So she let him put the tape over her mouth.

She interpreted it as conciliatory when he stared into her eyes intensely, leaning forward into her face, as an expression of their mutual enjoyment. But when he pulled back a little and heavy-handedly forced her knees apart and jammed some hard object up into her, the pain was so intense that everything went black. Her body’s pain reflexes tensed her already-contracted muscles so the only reaction was a small jerk that made her arms and legs twitch. She was so stunned by the pain that was tearing her apart that she hadn’t given a thought to the fact that she would suffocate if she couldn’t breathe through her nose. She frantically turned her head to the side; the pain stopped, and she heard him drop something onto the floor. The dildo she kept in the drawer of her nightstand fleetingly entered her mind; that might be what he had found, but before she finished the thought she felt his hands around her neck. Tears blurred her vision as she looked at him to see when it would stop. He wasn’t squeezing, just letting his hands rest there as he settled on top of her with his full weight and plunged deep between her thighs.

She relaxed a little again. Now it was done: he had had his orgasm. She tried to signal to him with her eyes that it was okay, she had gotten through it, but even before he yanked her over so she was hanging off the edge of the bed she could tell he had no intention of stopping. Rage shot through her with the same intensity as the blow she had laid into the side of his head. She gathered her strength, and when he tried to flip her onto her stomach she kicked out at him again. Furious, he turned his back to her and left the room.

With difficulty she got up onto her legs and looked around for a weapon, but before she made it around the bed she sensed him behind her. It happened so fast that she didn’t have a chance to parry the blow. Nausea set in as the next blow thundered into her face, and everything went black before she hit the floor. She lay there behind the bed with her eyes closed and heard him getting dressed as she felt nausea overwhelm her.

She tried to hold it back by taking steady, deep breaths. Her relief at hearing the main door slam shut behind her made her relax a bit, but it was too late to stop the powerful wave of vomit surging through her like a convulsion. Her immobilized body flinched reflexively, and she fought for air. The next minute felt like an hour.

Another wave of vomit came, but she was no longer aware of it. Unconscious, she lay heavily on the floor and didn’t notice her throat fill up and her cheeks distend.

“W
E’RE GOING FISHING,”
M
ARKUS BRAGGED AS HE BOUNDED
out of the car into the yard.

Louise’s mother came out to welcome them. Peter walked over and gave her a kiss on the forehead.

“Hey, you!” Louise’s father called from the farmhouse. She waved at him and gave her mother a hug.

Her parents had traded in their apartment in Copenhagen for an old rundown country house before Louise and her brother started at the local elementary school. Now it was hard to imagine that her parents had ever been city dwellers, and it was perfectly all right with Louise that they had continued to live in the country. Once in a while she would get an intense urge to sit out in the yard under the enormous apple tree and walk through the fields, which were surrounded by woods. On the other hand, she had a hard time imagining that she would ever move to such a rural area, even though the landscape had become a part of her and filled her with an inner peace so pronounced that she noticed the change the second she stepped out into the yard. She took a deep breath of the fresh air and started carrying their bags in from the car.

“How’re you guys doing?” Her father asked the first question as they sat down around the garden furniture on the patio. Louise smiled and contemplated her parents. Everything was as usual. She sighed contentedly and dragged her chair over into the sun. From out in the yard, she could hear Markus mowing some grass with the ancient manual lawnmower. It always amazed her that children were so willing to push it back and forth. She herself would do anything to get out of it.

“The kids won’t be here until around five thirty,” her mother announced, “so you guys can enjoy a little peace and quiet before the tornados arrive.”

Thank God,
Louise thought. Her two godchildren really could wreak havoc on a place. She had teased Mikkel and Trine many times, saying that just because there was a lot of space available, that didn’t mean they should raise their kids to use every last inch of it. She meant that in all seriousness, but either they thought she was joking, or they refused to see the problem. Instead, they always got back at her by asking if she and Peter were going to have any children, and the conversation always ground to a halt right there.

Peter had an easier time finding things to talk to Louise’s brother and sister-in-law about. After dinner, he asked with interest how things were going with their house, but by that point Louise had already disappeared into the kitchen to start cleaning up and making coffee. She was so rarely in the mood to listen to her brother and his wife talk about their staid life and big circle of friends, with one social event after another. On the other hand, this never bothered Peter. He took the whole thing in stride, and even remembered whatever they had told him the last time they were together. She smiled at him as he sat there nodding at whatever her sister-in-law was saying. It wasn’t until they stood up to say good-bye two hours later that she realized it had actually ended up being quite a pleasant evening.