Call Me Princess (18 page)

Camilla nodded dreamily and purred “Mmm” in a deep, mellifluous voice. She had always described her dream man as dark and a good deal taller than her own five-foot-seven.

“Did you meet him online?” Louise’s voice cut through the pleasant mood in the kitchen, stripped of any hint of encouragement or approval. Peter, who was washing the frying pan, dropped it into the sink with a bang and turned around in indignation.

“Would you give it a rest?!” Peter exclaimed. “Has it escaped your notice that the Internet is a completely normal way to meet someone?” he asked, looking at Louise accusingly.

Louise didn’t even deign to look at him, continuing, in her stern tone, “Do you have a picture of him?”

Camilla shook her head. The purr in her voice was now replaced with grumpy exasperation. “No, I don’t,” Camilla said. “What the fuck is wrong with you, anyway? Can’t you just be happy for me that I met a guy I want to be with?”

“Yes, of course,” Louise said, a tad defensively.

Peter gave up on washing the dishes and came back over to sit down.

“Under normal circumstances, I’d be thrilled for you—” Louise began, trying to clarify.

“But, what, in your mind the Internet isn’t a ‘normal circumstance’?” Camilla blurted out before Louise could finish. Louise held up both hands to try to calm the situation.

“That has nothing to do with it. I would be over the moon for you if I hadn’t just been watching the autopsy of... standing over the corpse of a woman just a couple years younger than you who invited a dark-haired man she met online home with her the night before...—well, I guess, Friday night...” Louise raised her hand again to keep Camilla from interrupting her, “and it just so happened that this dark-haired guy was in all likelihood the same guy who bound, gagged, and raped Susanne Hansson on Monday. Both of those women had one thing in common, and that was that they fell for him online. So you’ll have to just excuse me if I’m not gushing over with enthusiasm.”

Everyone was quiet. Louise no longer needed to fight to get a word in edgewise. “And when they wheeled the corpse into the autopsy room this morning,” she continued, “for a minute I fucking thought it was you lying on that table, Camilla! The victim even lived in Frederiksberg.”

“All right, that’s enough! I don’t want any more details,” Camilla burst out in fear.

Peter put his hand on the back of Louise’s neck and stroked her with his thumb.

Then Camilla’s horrified expression changed, her eyes revealing the steely glint of a journalist on the trail of a new story. Seeing this, Louise hastened to add that that was all she was going to say about the two cases.

“Lieutenant Suhr will be putting out a press release tomorrow,” Louise said. Camilla, in full crime-reporter mode, completely ignored this last comment.

“There are two victims? So, does that mean you’re hunting for a serial rapist?” she fished.

Louise nodded, but obstinately insisted that she would say no more.

“What time does Suhr come in to work in the morning?” Camilla asked.

“Just before the morning briefing at eight,” Louise replied.

“Fuck it—I’m going to call him tonight,” Camilla said, sounding enthusiastic.

The wistful, dreamy look was long gone from Camilla’s face. Now a professional spark had been lit. She had apparently moved her own love life to the back burner, faced with the prospect of a case that would undoubtedly fill the front pages of the newspapers in the coming days. She was about to stand up when Louise put a hand on her arm and asked her to sit back and tell them more about her date.

“What do you know about Henning?” Louise asked.

“I know plenty about him,” Camilla said, a tad defensively. “He’s good-looking and doesn’t seem very criminal. Even if you seem to think that.”

“I don’t think anything,” Louise said, tired. “All I know is that, at this very moment, a guy with a special knack for charming his way into the panties of women he meets online is ravaging the city. He’s brutal and calculating and a sadistic fuck. And to top it off, he’s sneaky. So far, he’s made sure we can’t even trace where he’s e-mailing from.”

“Well, then you can rule out Henning,” Camilla said triumphantly, drinking the last of her wine. “He writes me from his living room out in Sorø.”

“Sorø! Henning’s from Sorø? Really, Sorø?” Louise teased, smiling.

“What’s wrong with that? Have you ever even been there?” Camilla countered. Sorø was a sleepy lakeside bedroom community about an hour west of Copenhagen, not exactly the hip, urban neighborhood Louise would have expected Camilla to pick a man from.

“I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with Sorø,” Louise said. But now she was laughing. Peter shot her a look and she tried to stop, but small, shivering twitches in Peter’s cheeks revealed that even he was only just barely able to suppress his own chuckling.

“Maybe Henning walks around wearing white gym socks with Tevas, too,” Louise managed to say between guffaws. Her laughter released all the tension that had been building up in her gut since she walked into the kitchen, and now it washed over her, robbing her of any chance of regaining her composure.

Camilla slid her chair back over the kitchen floor in a huff. “I don’t have to listen to this! He fucking does not—and, anyway, so what if he did? A guy can still be hot even if he walks around wearing lame-ass gym socks.”

The last comment finally pushed Peter over the edge, and he dissolved into laughter as well.

It had always been Camilla’s mantra that she would rather “end up an old maid than fall in love with some hick who goes around in gym socks and Tevas.”

All the laughter and Camilla’s angry outburst brought Markus storming in. “What is going on in here?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” his mother said. “Louise and Peter are just goofing around.”

He lingered in the doorway, but eventually gave up and went back to his video game without finding out what he’d missed.

Louise grew serious again. “Not to be paranoid, but you actually have no way of knowing whether Henning is sitting at home in Sorø writing to you just because that’s what he claims he’s doing.”

“Why would he lie about that?” Camilla asked, more subdued. A small trace of uncertainty had crept into her voice, and she had apparently stopped taking Louise’s comments personally and was now listening instead of being defensive.

“I’m sure he probably wouldn’t. But our suspect had his victims—well, his first victim, at least,” Louise said, correcting herself, “convinced that he was sitting at home in his apartment, even though he was actually e-mailing from a public computer. So it’s hard to be sure. Was he at your place all Friday evening?”

Camilla was about to defend herself again, but relented and instead just said, “Yeah... until about eight o’clock. Then he said he had to meet someone.”

“Who?” Louise asked.

Camilla shrugged and admitted that she hadn’t asked. After all, it was just their first date.

“I know tons of great stories about people who met each other this way,” Camilla said after a moment’s silence. Peter got up and went back to doing the dishes.

“And I’ve only heard a couple of bad stories,” she continued, “and I’m sure there are only a tiny number that sink to the level you’re describing.”

“Obviously. I know that,” Louise said quickly and a tad defensively.

She also knew plenty of heartwarming stories with happy endings, and she actually did have a soft spot in her heart for single people who preferred writing to a potential boyfriend or girlfriend online as opposed to trawling the picked-over crowd that hangs out at the city’s bars weekend after weekend.

Mollified by Louise’s comment, Camilla conceded that there were obviously some con artists out there who were really living it up, doing whatever they wanted under identities that existed only in their imaginations.

“This one time, I wrote a piece about a girl who met a man who really ‘thought outside the box,’” Camilla said. “He convinced her that he was building a big hacienda in Spain. She lent him money several times because he claimed the banks in Spain couldn’t figure out how to transfer money from his Danish accounts. So she was happy to pay, believing that he was sending her money to the contractors in Spain so the swimming pool would be finished by the time they went down there on vacation.”

Camilla sighed, thinking about the woman.

“The relationship ended as soon as she realized that he didn’t even own a planter of flowers in
front
of a hacienda. Her money was gone, and so was he, the minute she closed her wallet.”

“Some people are just naïve,” Peter said to her from over by the kitchen sink.

Louise shook her head slightly. “It’s inevitable that misfits and psychopaths will be attracted to a venue like the Internet. The problem is just that it’s so fucking hard to spot them on a screen,” she philosophized.

“Well, if you’ve got such bad judgment, you have to hire a private eye!” Camilla said.

Louise interpreted her friend’s comment as a joke.

“No, seriously, some people really do that,” Camilla explained when she saw Louise’s smile. “There has been a big uptick lately in that kind of work at all the detective agencies.”

“Well, maybe just to be safe you should hire a detective to take a little look at Henning,” Louise suggested, knowing at the same time that that would spoil the pleasant, joking atmosphere they had managed to recapture.

“It’s not him. He’s a perfectly ordinary guy, definitely not a serial rapist,” Camilla said and then got up and went into the living room to tell Markus they were going. After a brief debate, he came back out with her and started putting on his shoes.

Louise had gotten up and was standing in the entry. Camilla stood in front of her and put her arms on Louise’s shoulders, shaking her slightly as Markus went out into the kitchen to say good-bye to Peter.

“Can’t you just give it a rest? Sometimes I get the feeling that you don’t want me to be happy.”

That stung. Camilla might not have meant it that way, but it felt like her friend had just kicked her in the stomach. She pulled herself together and then wrapped her arms around Camilla and pulled her close.

“There’s nothing I want more. I’m just saying you should be careful.”

“You think I’ve got crappy judgment,” Camilla said, her voice now a whisper.

“That’s not what I meant,” Louise protested. “I’m sorry. I just don’t feel like getting called out to your apartment and finding your arms and legs tied behind you. But I guess enough is enough. Even I can tell that I’m being too much of a busybody.”

After they said good-bye, Louise lingered in the doorway, watching them go down the stairs. Her body felt heavy and her mind felt groggy after what Camilla had said. She shut the door and went into the kitchen to help with the last of the cleaning.

Do I really not want her to be happy?
she wondered. Of course that wasn’t true, but sometimes Camilla plunged into things without thinking them through, and that’s what worried her.

She started the dishwasher and headed to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

According to the statistics, Camilla wasn’t an obvious rape victim, according to this lunatic’s perceived “type.” But Christina Lerche hadn’t been one, either, which just meant that their initial theory that the suspect targeted quiet, insecure women who dreamed of a man and a stable, secure relationship had already been shot down.

Peter sat down in front of the TV to watch a movie that sounded like it was well under way. Louise went into the bedroom to put on her pajamas. It struck her that she actually did not know what Camilla had written in her profile. Maybe she just said that she’d lived alone with her son for years, and that she longed for someone to share her life with. Maybe the take-charge, independent, urban side of Camilla—a woman who wouldn’t dream of putting her precious feet into shoes that cost less than several hundred dollars—was hard to spot through whatever wishes and desires she expressed when looking for a life partner. Louise had no idea, and it really wasn’t any of her business, either. Of course she wanted Camilla to be happy, even if it meant dating someone from Sorø.

She returned to the living room and flopped down onto the couch with Peter, pulling the afghan over her.

“What movie is this? What have I missed?”

Since he had been watching for only ten minutes himself, Peter’s summary was somewhat vague, so she gave up on following the movie and closed her eyes instead.

“Y
OU CAN USE THIS ROOM HERE.
W
E’RE JUST PULLING THE TAPES.
From what I understood, you want to see both ends of the platform at Kongens Nytorv, as well as the escalators?”

Lars confirmed this.

The security manager in charge of the surveillance archives had been waiting for them when they arrived. He led them down past the Copenhagen Metro’s security office, where they monitored the surveillance footage from all stations continuously. A little farther down the hall was the archive itself, with its narrow steel shelves full of surveillance tapes from all the subway stations.

“There are monitors and two players in the next room.” He pointed into a room the size of a cigar box. “The footage has also been burned onto DVDs, so you can take what you need to use back to police headquarters if that’d be more comfortable,” he offered.

“No, this is fine. We’ll watch them here,” Louise said. She was impatient to get started and didn’t think it would take them long. They had a time window of about two hours, and there was CCTV coverage from two angles, so they could each concentrate on one section of the station. For the moment, they were interested only in the north side of the platform where the trains heading toward Valise station stopped, since Christina Lerche had lived in Frederiksberg, four stops before that.

“Knock yourselves out,” said a short, fair-haired man who came in and powered up the machines. “This is some scintillating stuff!”

They thanked him and remained standing until he left.

When they’d left headquarters after the morning briefing, they’d driven past Christina’s apartment, and Lars had run upstairs to leaf through the photo album he had remembered seeing on the bookshelf in her bedroom. He was holding three pictures when he came back down to the car. Vacation photos of a happy, very much alive woman. Two close-ups of her face, and one showing her full body. They set the pictures on the table between them and started figuring out how the Metro Security machines worked.