Call Me Princess (6 page)

“This is obviously very harmful to her mental state,” Jakobsen continued, “and I have to smash that notion before I’ll allow her to leave.”

Louise could only nod and accept that there was nothing she could do about it. Jakobsen always got his way. It was obviously also more important for Susanne to be able to continue living with herself than for them to get a good description of the suspect right this very moment.
More important from a human perspective!
she thought, repressing her inner cop.

“Tell her to call me when she gets home, and we’ll make a new appointment.”

T
HEY PARKED ON
O
TTO
M
ØNSTEDSGADE, ENTERED POLICE
headquarters through the side door next to the municipal courtroom where they hold preliminary hearings, and continued on up to the second floor to Unit A.

“So we’re essentially in a holding pattern,” Lars said, flopping down into his chair. “It’s irritating that there isn’t a crowd of witnesses to help us identify this perp. On the other hand it’s just fucking weird not to have to go through a ton of witness statements.”

“So why don’t you go down to Tivoli and ask if anyone saw anything?” Louise suggested absent-mindedly, as she checked to see if they’d gotten any messages while they were out. “Although I don’t know what picture you would take to show people.” She glanced over at him. “We only have pictures of Susanne in her battered state. There’s not a soul alive who could recognize her face that way. And in terms of the perp, it’s not like we have much of a description to go by. I would assume there were quite a few dark-haired men among the couples dining there Monday night if you were to ask at the various restaurants. So if going down there would make you feel more productive, give it a try. But first, drive back to her apartment and find a picture that actually looks like her.”

Just then there was a knock on the door, and Heilmann walked in.

“We traced his e-mails,” she announced.

Sergeant Henny Heilmann was fifty-seven and had been the head of Group 2 for the four years Louise had been working in the homicide division. When Heilmann’s husband had fallen seriously ill last year, she had taken some time off to stay home and take care of him toward the end. It took less than a week, and he was dead, but it took three months before she came back to work. Since then, she’d told Louise that she’d spent the first month slowly trying to adjust to the idea that she was alone. And that twenty-six years of marriage were over. After that, she’d spent some time visiting her sister in France, and for the last several weeks before she returned to work she’d done a few different things—including a fourteen-day yoga-and-meditation retreat in Vrå. When she returned to work, she got in the habit of starting her day with a jog past the Little Mermaid Statue along the Langelinie Promenade, losing about fifteen pounds. Her body, which had been in good shape before, was now fit and muscular in her short-sleeved T-shirt and short skirt, which stopped just above her knee.

Louise had always had a great deal of respect for her chief investigator, and when Louise heard about the yoga retreat, her already admirable opinion of Henny increased. She mostly thought of Heilmann as fairly reserved and a hard worker. Louise found that the image of Heilmann sitting in the lotus position meditating, with her middle finger and thumb together, gave her boss a whole new dimension.

“Where did Bjergholdt write from?” Louise asked.

“From an Internet café on H. C. Ørstedsvej,” Heilmann responded.

Lars had gotten up and was standing in the middle of the office. “Bullshit!” He angrily slammed his right fist into the palm of his left hand.

“But if he wrote to her from that location every day for the last month, then there’s a reasonably good chance some of the other regulars or whatever you call them could recognize him or positively ID him,” Louise suggested.

“He actually wrote from multiple locations,” Heilmann said. “We traced most of the e-mails Susanne received from Bjergholdt’s e-mail account back to IP addresses that belong to that café, which has about twenty computers. But we also found an IP address that matches a computer at Frederiksberg Library and another one from the Central Library.”

“He really went out of his way to make himself hard to track down,” Louise exclaimed, watching her I’m-sure-someone-will-recognize-him theory crash and burn.

“You can say that again,” Heilmann nodded. “We’ve got to get a solid description, and then you have to go find out if anyone at any of those locations noticed him.”

Louise said that Susanne was having a session with Jakobsen, so they would have to wait a bit before they took her to look at pictures.

Heilmann, who was leaning against the door, stumbled forward when Senior Sergeant Willumsen suddenly pushed the door open.

“We need ten people out in Nykøbing Sjaelland. You guys are coming. We’re leaving in half an hour.”

“That’s going to be difficult,” Heilmann said coolly.

“We located the suspect in the murder of that immigrant woman that people thought would remain cold,” he continued, ignoring her.

“That’s nice,” Heilmann said calmly. “We’re busy getting a description of the perp in a rape case, so you’ll have to take people from one of the other groups.”

There were five investigative groups in the homicide division, so in principle there were plenty of people to choose from, but it just wasn’t in Willumsen’s nature to inconvenience himself by bothering to find out who had time to help out on a case. He took whoever was closest.

“Your case will just have to wait,” he said, looking at his watch. “Make sure you’re ready. Our guy left town and is at a summer house out by Rørvig right now. There’s no telling how long he’ll be there.”

“I don’t have anyone to put on that.” Heilmann spoke calmly, but Louise could see her temper starting to flare below the serene surface. Willumsen gladly took advantage of Heilmann’s lack of authority: his rank was higher than hers.

“Since you don’t even know who you’re looking for, it’s not like he’s going anywhere,” Willumsen said. The senior sergeant turned on his heel and started to leave.

“On the other hand, since you know exactly where your guy is, you could just get the police in Nykøbing to go pick him up,” Heilmann called after him, “and then search the house at your leisure afterward.”

Willumsen stopped and slowly turned around.

“It’s our case. The murder happened in Copenhagen, so we’ll apprehend him ourselves.”

Heilmann sighed and gave up. She suggested tersely that if he were going to take anyone from her group, he ought to take Toft and Stig.

“I don’t fucking have time to run around looking for your men,” he said. “Besides, they’re probably out bowling. Isn’t that what those two spend most of their time doing?”

Louise was just about to let loose on him for his snide insinuation, but managed to bite her tongue. Everyone in the division knew that Thomas Toft and Michael Stig spent quite a bit of their free time roaming Denmark’s various bowling alleys to procure gold medals, to the delight of the Policemen’s Bowling League, but it was clearly never at the expense of their duties.

Willumsen continued in the same tone, addressing Heilmann: “I expect you to come too. We’re heading out there together in three squad cars.”

Louise wondered if Willumsen grasped how abrasive he was when he was in this mood. He could be so unreasonable when he commandeered personnel from the other investigative groups, but then he always made a big stink whenever Lieutenant Suhr ordered him to hand over a couple of
his
officers if one of the other groups needed extra staff.

Heilmann kept a straight face when he left.

“Toft and Stig are on their way up,” she said as his footsteps faded away. “They were there when CCU analyzed Susanne’s computer. We might as well accept that we have to go to Nykøbing, so we’ll pick up again with the photos tomorrow.”

The Computer Crime Unit was the official designation for the experts who could trace any activity that had occurred on a computer. Sometimes the detectives were able to do it themselves in-house, but since Susanne’s computer was pretty much the only lead they had to follow, it had been sent over to the CCU experts in the fraud unit.

“Jeez, I cannot stand that guy,” Lars said after Heilmann left. He was sitting with his phone in his hand, and Louise guessed he was about to call his wife at home and let her know she was going to have to pick the kids up.

Lars had twin three-year-old boys whom they had adopted from Bolivia, and the first time they had visited the office with him they had pretty much managed to tear the place apart. During a second of inattention, they dumped the contents of several green case folders onto the floor, and when Louise returned from the bathroom they were sitting side by side, tossing the loose pages around—cute as anything, but clearly not conducive to professional productivity. She got the sense from her partner that he didn’t always mind being asked to stay late, although he loyally maintained that he did.

Louise tried to call Peter, but his cell went straight to voicemail, so she just left a quick message and added that she would call him again when she knew when he could count on seeing her. Then she stood up with a big sigh and went to join Willumsen’s group.

—

T
HE LOCATION OF THE SUMMER HOUSE HAD BEEN MARKED ON A MAP.
When they were about a quarter of a mile away, Willumsen turned on his blinker and pulled over to the side of the road. He waved the two cars following him to pull over too. Everyone gathered around the hood of his car.

“We got a tip from the local police this morning,” he said. “We’ve been searching for this man, and an officer who lives in this area recognized the picture we sent out, and he called it in.”

Louise moved in a little closer, listening as Willumsen handed out assignments. Like Heilmann, Louise was having a little trouble understanding why he didn’t just have the local Nykøbing police bring the guy in and wait to take over himself once they were sure that they had the right guy.

“The summer house is on a dead-end street,” Willumsen continued, poking the map authoritatively with his finger.

Louise gave up on trying to make out all the details on the map and decided listening would be enough. Willumsen nodded at the officers who would take up positions around the house, then the two officers would go in after the man.

“Once we’ve got him, we’ll search everything. We’ve got good reason to believe he brought the things he wanted to dispose of with him. We’ll have to go over everything with a fine-toothed comb.”

Louise had already heard that there wasn’t anything at the woman’s address or in the suspect’s home that could connect him to the murder. Her body had been placed on a post near the suspect’s car, an older model white Peugeot 309. Louise stood so she had a good view of the front door of the summer home.

Willumsen looked around once before walking up to the front door and knocking. Everyone had their weapons drawn, and when the senior sergeant raised his hand and knocked again, Louise suddenly felt the weight of her pistol and holster. Arrests usually went off without a hitch, but she’d also seen them get out of hand, and it only took a second for that to happen.

—

T
HE MAN WAS WEARING SWEATS AND DENIED HAVING ANY KNOWLEDGE
of the woman Willumsen was talking about. Gesturing wildly with his arms, he uttered a bunch of loud complaints before two officers grabbed him from either side and led him back into the living room.

Louise stood behind the white Peugeot, waiting. A second later, her colleagues came to the door again with the man between them. Now he looked obstinate and furious as they led him over to one of the police cars and put him in the back seat.

Willumsen walked over to Louise.

“You and Jørgensen drive him back to headquarters. I’ll stay here and lead the search.”

“Aren’t you going to question him?”

They’d been looking for this guy since Saturday, and now suddenly there was no hurry to get him to talk?

“Of course, but he’ll have to wait until we’ve searched the house.”

That made sense, but Louise didn’t understand the division of labor. The most obvious thing would be for Willumsen to take him back to police headquarters and get started with the questioning while the others conducted the search.

“Just get a move on!” he ordered.

What the fuck is he thinking,
Louise wondered, not believing her ears. She looked around quickly for Heilmann, furious at having been roped into serving as a fucking chauffeur for some arrogant senior sergeant when she could have been using this time to go through photos with Susanne instead. Seething, she walked right past Willumsen to tell Heilmann that they were leaving.

Louise found Heilmann hunched over a dark-brown leather suitcase. Wearing white latex gloves, she was fishing out articles of clothing one by one. She just nodded absent-mindedly at Louise’s apologies and kept going through the clothes, completely wrapped up in her task. A mood of concentration pervaded the whole small wooden summer house, where officers were searching every room for hidden items. Louise gave up. Through the window, she saw Lars standing next to the car, looking for someone. She guessed he was looking for her, so she walked out to him.

The whole way to Copenhagen, the suspect sitting next to her in the back seat didn’t say anything; but as they approached police headquarters, he started talking loudly and quickly: “What do you want from me? Why are you doing this?”

“It makes sense that the police want to talk to you,” Louise interrupted. “Your wife was just murdered, and we haven’t been able to locate you until now.”

“I loved my wife. I’m grieving,” he yelled.

Louise tuned him out even though he kept on talking. Lars was sitting stiffly in the driver’s seat, like a robot, maneuvering through traffic. At some point, the suspect started crying. Louise turned and shot him a dirty look.

“Should we put him down in the basement?” Lars asked over his shoulder.