Farewell to Freedom (39 page)

“The agreement was that we would help with three babies. But it kept going. Every time we made a new agreement, he broke it, and we couldn't stop it. If we hadn't accepted the falsified birth certificate, we could have severed our ties to him whenever we wanted. But the way it was, he had something on us. If we didn't do what he said, we would lose Jonas.”

“Yes, and you would probably also have lost the reputation you had built up in the media if the story about an illegal baby came out.”

“Oh, whatever—I wouldn't have cared about that. But we were not going to risk having Jonas taken away from us and sent back to Bosnia. We had gotten trapped in Bosko's web and we were stuck no matter how hard we wriggled. Things went on like that for several years, and then suddenly we stopped hearing from him. You can probably imagine what an incredible relief that was when we realized it was over,” he said, watching Camilla, who didn't have time to nod before he continued. “But then everything with Alice happened, and suddenly there was only me and Jonas. At that point I obviously should have told him how everything fit together. Alice and I talked about that many times, but then when she died I just couldn't get myself to do it. His mother's death was so hard on him, and that wasn't the right time to tell him that she and I weren't his biological parents. Then he was missing her so much, it still wasn't the right time. And now it almost feels like it's too late. I know I should have done it, but it just never felt like it was the right time.”

Henrik shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair despondently.

“And if I'm being honest, it's not something I've really given much thought to since. In my heart he's my son. It doesn't make any difference to me if we gave birth to him. But I know that it might mean something to him, that he doesn't know about his heritage, and in the last few days I've also become horribly aware that I'm risking his turning against me because I haven't told him the truth. The question is if it will even be enough to explain how much we loved him from the first moment we saw him and how right it felt to make him our child.”

“Do you need to tell him that now?” Camilla asked after a bit. She had to clear her own throat to get her voice to work properly.

Henrik nodded.

“This is never going to end. I don't want to keep going anymore, and I don't want to lie anymore. I haven't heard from Bosko in so many years, and I refused to believe there was a connection when the boys found that little girl in the church. It wasn't until you found the little dead one who was missing a toe that I started to suspect what was coming.”

He smiled sadly.

“I also didn't get that he was the one who had sent Tereza the first time she rang the bell and asked for work. Even though that happened the same evening. I turned her away the second time she came, too, even though she brought a letter with her. It just didn't occur to me that he might send me a housekeeper.”

Camilla was concentrating, but it was hard for her to get everything to fit together so that all the events made sense.

“After I turned her away again—still without understanding what was going on—he cut the toe off that little boy. Then there was no longer any mistaking his message.”

“But how does Tereza fit into the picture?” Camilla asked, confused.

“I didn't figure it out until today either. He needs to stash her somewhere where the police won't be watching her.”

Camilla raised one eyebrow, still not understanding.

“I was supposed to give her work in my home. In the beginning I didn't like the idea, but when she told me about the network, I was glad to help. Then it dawned on me that it wasn't really a question of my generosity, but rather that the girls should have free access to my home. But it wasn't until this morning, when I overheard a conversation, that the chips fell into place. I had just gotten back from the bakery and was about to put breakfast on the table for the boys, and Tereza obviously hadn't heard me come in.”

Henrik looked at Camilla, as if he were ashamed of himself.

“They're prostitutes,” he said, slowly and clearly. “And Tereza is some kind of madam. Every day the girls meet to hand over the money they made the previous night. One of the girls is only fourteen. And you can call the police and tell them that they don't need to look for Baby Girl's mother anymore. It's Tereza's baby. Bosko's people took her from her the second she was born. She never got to see her. She only knows her daughter from the pictures on TV.”

Camilla's mouth hung open as she pictured the little baby in her mind. A deep desperation hit her when she realized that the circumstances that had separated the mother from her infant were far more unbearable than what she had imagined.

“And quite right, that little boy was stillborn. His mother is from Romania, but works as a prostitute in Malmö. Bosko trafficked her, too.”

“How do you know all this?” Camilla whispered.

“I asked Tereza to pack up her things and get out of here when I realized what she did and what she was using my residence for. At first she was all tough and threatened me, because she knew the whole story on Jonas. But I decided that I wasn't going to let myself be threatened anymore. I yelled that she could go right ahead and tell Bosko that it was done, and that I wanted her out of here right away. When she realized I meant it, she completely broke down and told me about her baby, which he'd taken from here. In exchange for that, she no longer had to turn tricks herself and just collected the money from the other girls instead. She was more than willing to pay that price.”

Camilla slumped, suddenly noticing that the cold had crept in under her skin while the pastor was talking.

“She was afraid, and she swore that Bosko would come after me when he heard that I'd kicked her out.”

“Will he?” Camilla asked, and Henrik nodded.

“I have no doubt. I see now that I'll never be free of him if I don't stand by what's happened.”

“What about Jonas, then? Isn't there a risk that you'll lose him if the truth comes out?”

The pastor nodded with a sad smile.

“Yeah, and that's why he and I need to leave. This will never end as long as I stay in Denmark. Bosko will always be able to find me. We're going to have to start all over again, establish ourselves somewhere else under a new name. I have no doubt that the business with the toe was his way of saying that if I don't do what he says, then it will be Jonas next time. Our only chance for escape is to run away.”

Camilla nodded, feeling the tears running down along her nose, because she knew he was right.

“I've decided to tell the police everything I know about Bosko and his business undertakings in this country, but once they get my version of events, I will have already left.”

“Where are you going?”

He shrugged and avoided looking her in the eyes. She could tell he'd made a decision but he wasn't going to tell her what it was.

55

A
RIAN RAN HIS FINGERS THROUGH HIS SHOULDER
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LENGTH BLACK
hair and looked at Louise over his steel-rimmed glasses.

She couldn't read anything from his expression, but she knew that he was lying to their faces when he repeated that, yes, he did know a few of the girls from the Istedgade neighborhood, but that he didn't have the foggiest idea what they did for a living.

He shrugged his shoulders exaggeratedly.

“I don't know anything about their working as prostitutes. That kind of thing goes against my religion,” he repeated, holding out his hands as if it were an affront that they might even consider his being involved in such a thing.

Toft had been through the same thing all morning. Louise had joined him after lunch, after she finished waiting for Hana outside the apartment by Enghave Square. She hadn't gone anywhere else, which is what Louise had expected. On the other hand, Tereza had suddenly gotten out of a cab with two big bags and a face that made it clear she was nervous that someone would see her. She'd looked around several times before quickly walking over and ringing the bell as she again surveyed the street, waiting to be buzzed in. Pavlína came by a little before eleven and rang the bell several times. She had seemed angry or upset, Louise thought, as she watched Pavlína walk out into the street and look up at the windows before walking back to the door and ringing the bell some more. She spent fifteen minutes doing that before she gave up and left.

Toft had started with Hamdi, but, as he explained to Louise, Hamdi had pretty much not even opened his mouth. He sat in complete silence, shaking his head in response to every question.

When she had biked back to her office passing the back side of Central Station, her thoughts kept circling around Miloš Vituk, Bosko, and the Czech girls. She agreed that they were only going to have one shot at it when they decided to haul Miloš in, and if they struck too soon he'd pack up his whole business and he and Bosko would be long gone—and the case in Kødbyen and Kaj Antonsen's murder would end up in the unsolved-cases file.

But when would they have enough? Her train of thought was interrupted as the cell phone in her jacket pocket started ringing. She thought she had explained herself clearly when she declined Camilla's dinner invitation by saying she was probably going to have to work late. But Camilla had just said that she'd have the food ready at six and that it was important that Louise come because there was something Camilla had to tell her about the pastor and the business out at the church.

Louise had shaken her head as she waited for a red light and then set the phone down in her purse in her bike basket.

Upstairs, she went to the kitchen and got two pieces of crisp bread, which she quickly scarfed down as Toft filled her in on what they had gotten out of the questioning.

“It's not like we've really gotten very far,” Toft admitted before they walked into his office, where Arian had been asked to wait.

The Albanian had been politeness itself and obligingly answered all their questions as long as they didn't have anything to do with the business they suspected him of being behind.

Arian willingly admitted that for a while he had been going to Central Station every morning.

“I drink a cup of coffee and read the free papers.”

“Who are the girls who walk up to you?” Louise wanted to know.

Again Arian's shoulders took up a defensive posture, but after a little contemplation, he admitted that he knew a couple of them.

“But you haven't received money from any of them?”

He shook his head apologetically, as if he were sorry he couldn't be of more help to her.

Toft had remained silent after Louise took over the questioning, but now she saw him take out the pictures that had been taken while Arian was meeting with the girls while he was under surveillance. Toft pushed them across the desk one at a time.

“Then just explain to us what's going on here,” Toft asked, adding that to his eye, it looked like the girls met him daily to pay him. “You can see the dates in the corner of the pictures. These were taken over the last few weeks.”

Arian took the pictures and looked as if something suddenly occurred to him.

“Now I remember,” he exclaimed, flipping through the photographs without really looking at them. “I loaned a bunch of those girls money, and they came by to return it.”

“What did you loan them money for?” Toft asked.

“Food, or clothes if they were short. Back where I come from we help each other. If I talk to the girls, it's to make sure they're doing all right. It's friendliness. I'm just looking out for them.”

Toft gave Louise a look and changed the topic. He pulled out the list with the phone calls, and with a nod Arian confirmed that it was for his cell phone.

“We have a number of calls made on that phone,” Toft began, and Arian gazed at him with his accommodating look, nodding interestedly, as if it didn't really have anything to do with him.

“A lot of the calls go to the phones of the six girls named, whom we've identified as the girls you met with at Central Station. At the moment, all six of them are down at the Halmtorvet police station telling our colleagues how they're connected to you and Hamdi.”

Suddenly his hands flew up into a defensive position, and an expression came over his face that said that they were subjecting him to a great injustice.

“Well, if they really are prostitutes, as you say they are, then they'll just tell you what their pimps force them to say. But it's not true, I don't have anything to do with their work.”

His hands fell back down to rest on the edge of the desk, and Louise saw the little curl around his mouth that was supposed to show that he didn't have anything to hide even if someone claimed otherwise. But she also saw the flutter in his eye.

Toft ignored his vehement outburst and continued in his calm manner. His plastic cigarette was lying next to his pad of paper. Now he picked it up and sucked it a couple of times, before carefully stuffing it in his pocket, as if he had all the time in the world. Arian should just take all the time he needed to answer the next question.

“It is also still your contention that you don't know any of the girls, even though you're in daily telephone contact with them, multiple times per day?”

Toft popped a menthol in his mouth and watched the Albanian, who didn't show any sign of response but did sit for a long time, contemplating.

“As you know, I go to the Albanian club on Saxogade every day,” he began, looking from Toft to Louise. “We don't have a phone down there and when I'm there, my cell phone is almost always plugged in, recharging. While it is there, a lot of people could use it.”

“We've listened to calls in which you threatened the girls that you'll send the police after them if they don't pay. We hear you say that you're cooperating with the police so the girls have to do what you say, what you command, and that the money they pay goes to the police so the girls will be left alone.”