Farewell to Freedom (29 page)

“There is, of course, a third possibility. That someone paid you.”

He leaned over toward her menacingly.

“Is that it? Did someone pay you to write that crap?”

She shuddered when a little glob of spit hit her cheek.

“No one paid me or asked me to write anything they didn't think was true,” she said, deciding not to wipe her face, continuing to look him in the eye as she spoke.

He folded his hands behind his neck and tipped his head back. He sat like that for a bit, looking at the ceiling, before he dropped his hands again and looked at her.

“We didn't do it,” he repeated. “But someone really wants the police to think we were behind it.”

Now his tone was more subdued.

The man by the door was doing something with his phone, like he wasn't really involved with whatever was going on with Camilla.

“It's true that we were on Skelbækgade that night. I was also in the courtyard. But she was already lying on the ground when I got there with the blood pouring out of her.”

He glanced over at the door before he continued.

“I actually knew the girl, so I ran out to the car. Hamdi …,” he nodded toward the door again, and the guy reacted when his name was mentioned, but then looked away again quickly, “and I drove down to Halmtorvet to look for the person who had done it, but the police came quickly, so we pulled back.”

Camilla gathered up her courage before she interrupted him, her voice steady and clear.

“Why am I getting mixed up in all this? I don't want anything to do with this,” she said, maintaining eye contact. She saw his rage return.

“I want you to go to the police and tell them it wasn't us. They need to lay off our asses and start looking at the people who did it. You got it?”

His eyes were hard, and they bore into her as he spoke.

Camilla took a deep breath and nodded. Even here, with her ability to think rationally paralyzed by fear, she knew her only option was to humor them. The fact that they wanted her to go to the police meant that at least they weren't planning to kill her.

“The police listen to you, and you're going to tell them to leave us alone and go after the right killer.”

“I knew Kaj. Not that well, but I knew him, and I know what happened to him in that courtyard.”

Camilla was interrupted by Hamdi, who came over from the door to stand next to the desk.

“We weren't in that courtyard and we didn't touch him. Why don't you ask the police if they know why Ilana wasn't on the flight from Prague that day we went to the airport to get her? We know they were there too, and if they haven't already talked to their Czech counterparts, then I suggest that they do.”

The guy with the glasses nodded.

“Then they'll find out that she couldn't have taken that flight because she was found that same day in the apartment where she rented a room, her throat slit. They can also ask what the police have on that Serb we heard was seen in the building in Prague the day Ilana was murdered, because he was
also
in Copenhagen when the two murders took place.”

“If he was seen, then I'm sure the police are already searching for him,” Camilla said, watching him.

“No point in searching for him,” he said, a smile rippling across his lips. “He's not the type who gets caught.”

Again she had that feeling in her throat. She didn't know how long she'd been in this back room, but she had no desire to know all the stuff she'd just been told. Mostly she wanted to go home to bed, so she could pull the covers up over her head and shut everything out.

“I don't know anything about a flight from Prague or some Ilana who didn't show up. I suggest you tell the police about this yourself, just the way you told me, if you think they know what's going on.”

The arms were around her shoulders before she saw them coming and she was lifted up off the chair.

“We'll drive you over to the police and then you will tell them what I just told you. And tell them they should leave us alone.”

She was yanked toward the door. They quickly exited the premises, and Camilla felt like someone was holding the doors for her so she flew through until she was sitting in the back seat of the car and listening to the motor start.

“If I'm going to talk to the police, you need to drive me to Police Headquarters. I know someone there, someone I can make listen to me.”

Something had relaxed within her. The fear didn't seem quite as paralyzing. On the other hand, she was fully aware that they would come after her again if she didn't do as they instructed.

39

T
HERE WAS A PRINTOUT OF NAMES ON
L
OUISE
'
S DESK WHEN SHE
returned from the pastor's residence. She exhaled slowly as she skimmed through the pages, counting about fifty women who had been due to deliver their babies during the period of time they were looking at.
There'll be even more once we track down the women who were
past
their due dates
, Louise thought and glanced over at her partner.

“Should we just divvy up the list and work our way through?” she asked Lars.

He nodded and noted dryly that of course calling the women wouldn't do any good.

“You're right about that,” she answered, undoing her ponytail and shaking out her hair before gathering it into a bun and wrapping the elastic around it.

“The only way is the hard way,” she said, mimicking Willumsen's brusque tone, “and if we're lucky, we'll be done by August,” she added, spreading out the pages.

“I suppose you're most interested in your local area, so why don't you take Herlev, Hvidovre, and Glostrup? Then I can do National Hospital, Gentofte, and Frederiksberg,” she suggested and was interrupted by the phone on her desk ringing. It was the front desk informing her that a Camilla Lind was downstairs and wanted to talk to her. Would Louise come down and escort her in, or should they send her away?

“I'll be right down,” she said quickly.

Lars gave her a questioning look.

“It's Camilla. Of course she wasn't there when I went home. I have no idea what she's been off doing or why she blew Jakobsen off this morning. I was starting to get a little worried about her,” Louise said as she darted out the door.

Down in the courtyard, Louise stopped short when she spotted Camilla in the waiting area. The only sign of life on her was the red access badge she had clipped to the waistband of her loose gray sweatpants. Her face was pale and bore no makeup at all, and her hair was flat. But what stopped Louise in her tracks most was something in Camilla's face, a tenseness that made Louise break into a jog for the last few steps before putting her arms around her friend.

They stood there for a moment, both stunned. Then Louise loosened her grasp and said that she was assuming Camilla wanted to come up to her office. Camilla nodded mutely, and Louise saw that she'd begun to cry. She put her arm around Camilla again and led her across the courtyard.

While she'd been downstairs, Lars had organized his list of names by addresses and had already planned the order of his visits. He'd turned off his computer and was standing up, his jeans jacket over his arm, clearly about to leave.

Camilla had stopped crying and dried her eyes on her sweater sleeves, but they still looked red. When they were still out in the hallway, she started telling Louise about what the two Albanians had done to her, and now she assured them both that she was only crying out of relief, that they hadn't actually hurt her.

“Have a seat,” Louise ordered, pointing to the visitor's chair.

Lars tossed his jeans jacket aside and offered to make a pot of coffee. Louise nodded to him and dug a ten-kroner coin out of her pocket, asking him to stop by the vending machine in the lunchroom on his way and buy a bag of gummy candies.

“They didn't do it,” Camilla said once the door had closed behind him.

Louise took a seat and studied Camilla before she even tried to understand what Camilla was talking about. Had she been drinking? Or what was wrong? She wasn't making any sense.

“They didn't do what?” she asked.

“Kill Kaj. Or that prostitute in Kødbyen. They admit that they were on Skelbækgade, but she was already dead when he went into the courtyard.”

Camilla's words swirled past her and Louise asked her to hold on.

“You blew Jakobsen off this morning even though he moved around his whole schedule and canceled another patient to make room for you,” Louise said, trying to slow the pace down a little. “Did you do that so you could go play private detective?”

Camilla shook her head.

“I overslept,” she apologized and promised to call Jakobsen to set up a new appointment if he was still willing to see her.

Lars pushed the door open with his foot and walked in with a thermal carafe, three cups, a bag of Eldorado, and a roll of chocolate cookies. Louise smiled at him and got up to close the door as he set everything down on the desk.

“Were they watching for you out on the streets?” Louise asked after Camilla told her about her morning and her visit to Central Station.

“Yeah, I was on my way to Halmtorvet to see if I could find one of Kaj's old friends and I didn't hear the car stop,” she explained and then blew on her coffee before taking a sip.

“What did the guys look like?” Lars asked to get the details squared away.

“The one who grabbed me had kind of smooth, shoulder-length hair and glasses.”

Louise and Lars exchanged looks.

“So it was Arian and Hamdi,” they agreed. And Camilla nodded when she heard the names.

“God damn it!” Lars pushed his chair back against the wall, put his legs up, and rested his mug on his knee. “Well, then they've figured out that we're tailing them.”

“Yeah, I'd say so,” Camilla said, with a sarcastic little smile. The first one Louise had seen since she spotted her downstairs. “But I was supposed to tell you something—aside from the fact that they claim that they didn't kill those two people. The guy you say is named Arian knew her and says that he's sorry she's dead and that he sped off to get the killer. That's where he was going when he came back out of the building.”

“And what did they say that's supposed to convince us it wasn't them?” Louise urged, trying to get Camilla back on track.

“Something about how they were out at the airport waiting for a girl who never showed up. Apparently you guys were there, too,” she said, watching them until they both nodded in confirmation. “That girl was found dead in her room the day she was supposed to come. Her throat had been slit, and he recommended that you guys call your counterparts in Prague and ask about the Serb who was seen in the girl's building at the time of her murder. According to them, he was in Copenhagen when the two murders here were committed.”

Louise suspected that Lars thought this was a story they had just come up with, as if the two Albanians were trying to hamstring him, and she had to admit she was leaning that way herself.

“We'll bust them for unlawful imprisonment,” Lars said once Camilla was done. “How long did they hold you at the club?”

“No, no. Please, don't bother,” Camilla responded quickly. “But you're going to have to investigate whether there's any basis to what they said, because otherwise they're going to come after me again.”

“It's not our case anymore,” Louise explained, watching a look of confusion come over Camilla's face. “But I can either pass this on, or you can talk to Toft and Stig yourself. It's their case now.”

Camilla stiffened, looking at them in disbelief.

“What does that mean? You mean only two people are working on it?”

“Well, and Mikkelsen,” Louise added.

“Two people were violently murdered and there are only three men on the case? What the fuck's up with that?”

Louise wasn't sure why Camilla suddenly sounded so agitated. Camilla set down her cup and looked like she was getting ready for battle.

“Some officers from the downtown precinct will back them up when they need it,” Louise said in an attempt to tone things down a little.

“Well, what the fuck are you two doing then, sitting around the office drinking coffee and eating chocolate cookies?” Camilla burst out, nodding toward the open roll of cookies on the desk. “The two people you suspect of flaying open two human beings just pushed me into their car and hauled me down to some basement room on Saxogade. What the fuck! You have to do whatever you can to catch these people!” she shouted frantically. “If what they said is right—that someone
else
did it—you're going to have to go find out who it was.”

Camilla took a deep breath, down into her abdomen, and sank back in the chair.

“I'm sorry,” she said, rubbing her face to wipe the anger away. “It was just a huge shock to be detained like that,” she said. “And in a way, I think they were telling the truth when they said it wasn't them. Why else would they have let me go?”

Since no one seemed to have an immediate response to her question, she instead asked why they'd been taken off the case.

“We're investigating the stillborn baby you found in the church,” Louise said, quickly trying to assess whether it was a good idea to tell Camilla what Flemming had discovered. But before she was able to decide, Lars was already doing it.

“It turned out the little baby was assaulted after birth, and we got the case because the injury occurred after death.”

Camilla's face stiffened into an incredulous grimace.

“Someone hurt him?” she asked, looking from Lars to Louise.

Louise nodded.

“His pinky toe was amputated,” she explained.

She watched the vacant look in Camilla's eyes, which suddenly seemed to focus on a point just to the left of the window. Camilla stared at that spot for a second, trying to reason her way through this labyrinth of new information.