Call Me Princess Part 17

They parted ways when Camilla spotted the photographer she had arrived with, and Louise starting looking around for Susanne.

- THE PLACE WAS PACKED. LOUISE TRIED TO KEEP AN EYE ON LARS'S back as he disappeared into the crowd to search the room one more time. She caught sight of Susanne's short, dark hair by the door leading to the restrooms.

Louise kept her eyes trained on Susanne, which is why she noticed the second Susanne's eyes locked onto something. She saw Susanne falter for a second and then stiffen.

Louise quickly looked over to see who had triggered Susanne's response, but it was hard to tell who she was looking at. Louise started pushing her way through the crowd, trying in vain to make eye contact with Susanne. Annoyed, she forced her way through the crowds blocking her way and ignored the grumbling comments she provoked.

There he was.

Louise stopped short when she saw his wavy collar-length hair. He was talking to two women she estimated to be in their late twenties. Then he turned halfway around, and his profile was so clear that the adrenaline started pounding through her veins.

She wanted to run over to the exit and alert the team outside, but didn't dare leave Susanne. She quickly pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket and dialed Heilmann's number, but the call didn't go through. Irritated, she stared at the display and realized she had no service. There wasn't even one bar on the scale indicating signal strength. Of all the times.... She searched feverishly for Lars, but couldn't see him, so it was up to her to make sure Susanne found her way outside quickly so she wouldn't have to confront her rapist.

Of course they had talked about what she should do if she suddenly found herself face to face with him, and Heilmann's orders had been clear: "Do not speak to him. Turn around and walk toward the exit, so he doesn't have time to make any threats."

And yet Susanne wasn't heading toward the exit. She was standing there as if nailed to the spot, allowing herself to be jostled back and forth by the crowd of people heading toward the restrooms in a steady stream.

The wavy hair and the aristocratic profile were no longer within Louise's field of vision when she finally reached Susanne, grabbed ahold of her arm, and started pulling her along. She quickly realized that Susanne's feet were not obeying, so Louise put some muscle into it, and was practically dragging Susanne across the floor while irritatedly scanning the room for Lars. She thought she caught a glimpse of Jesper Bjergholdt heading toward the lounge room with those two young women.

Louise finally let go of Susanne's arm once they were outside, giving Susanne a moment to recover a little while she walked over to alert Michael Stig and Thomas Toft, so they'd be ready.

They came when she waved them over. She saw Heilmann coming from over by the cars holding her phone to her ear. Louise guessed she was advising the extra people, who were on site to a.s.sist, that the ball was in play, and they should be on the alert if it turned out he was there.

"We'll go in and get him," Stig said the second Heilmann lowered her phone. Heilmann gave him a look and took charge.

"In a second we'll have two people stationed by the loading bay doors around the side of the building, and the three of us will stay here," she said to Stig and Toft. Then she spotted Susanne and walked over to take charge of her. Heilmann put her arm around Susanne's shoulder and led her quickly over to the car she was using as a base of operations, and opened the rear door on the pa.s.senger side.

"Rick, you go in and find Jrgensen. I'll keep an eye out for our guy," she said once she returned from the cruiser. "If Jrgensen doesn't have any reception in the warehouse either, one of you will have to come out and let us know the second the suspect seems like he's about to leave."

Louise went back inside and started looking for her partner. She found him with Camilla by one of the tables near the bar. Slightly annoyed that he was standing there making small talk while the s.h.i.t was. .h.i.tting the fan, Louise approached and interrupted their conversation.

"Let's take another spin around the room," she said, worried that this would tip Camilla off that something was up, but her friend just waved at them and headed out into the crowd, as though she had been just waiting for a chance to slip away. Louise guessed that Henning had shown up or must be on his way, at any rate. Louise moved quickly, tugging Lars along, very aware that to other people she must look like a woman putting the moves on him.

"He's here," she said, letting go of her partner's jacket.

She quickly filled him in on what had happened and where she had last seen the suspect, and they headed purposefully toward the lounge, trying to look like a couple who had just met. Small groups of people were cl.u.s.tered together sitting on the pillows on the floor, other people were standing and leaning against the wall, because most of the places to sit were already taken. Louise and Lars stopped just inside the heavy sliding doors and started scanning the crowd.

"He was wearing a white shirt," it occurred to Louise to mention.

That quickly ruled out quite a few men, leaving only a few potential targets, and it didn't take long to determine that none of them was their guy.

Louise still felt the adrenaline pumping blood faster through her body, and she recognized the tense expression on Lars's face. If he was there, they'd get him.

"He's not in here," her partner determined, and they went out of the lounge back out into the main room, an inferno of light, music, and people.

They stood for a long time watching people dance, concentrating on spotting the ones in white shirts who had dark hair. Louise craned her neck and thought she spotted one of the women the man had been talking to, but Bjergholdt himself was nowhere in sight. They started scanning for him, walking among the countless tables that formed small islands in the vast room even though they knew at this rate they would be lucky to pick out a specific person in a crowd of two thousand. It was incredible enough that Louise had spotted him the first time-or, more accurately, that Susanne had.

Once they had been all the way around the room without results, they agreed to do the rounds one more time in case he had been in the bathroom, and after yet another round they decided to go outside. Louise stopped as they walked by one of the two women she had seen the suspect talking to, and she told Lars to go on ahead. She wanted to make one last try.

The woman knew who Louise was talking about right away.

"Duke," she said, and repeated it when Louise didn't respond. "That's his login name."

"I thought it was 'Mr. n.o.ble'!" Louise said, noting that either he really did have some blue blood in his veins or he was somehow preoccupied with the n.o.bility.

The young woman shrugged and didn't seem to know or care what Louise was talking about. "He left a while ago," she said, seeming like she was wrapping up the conversation.

That really got Louise's heart rate up. "The other young woman you guys were with, is she a friend of yours?"

"Yeah," the woman said. At first she stared blankly at Louise, but then a suspicious look crept into her eyes. "Why do you ask?"

It was obvious that she considered Louise a rival. She had already started walking away when Louise reached out and grabbed her arm.

"Did they leave together?" Louise asked pointedly and didn't have time to rephrase her question before the girl had twisted her arm free and started accusing her of a bunch of irrelevant stuff, which Louise didn't even bother paying attention to.

"Look, I'm a police officer, and I'm going to have to ask you to step outside with me," Louise said.

It was either the words "police officer" or Louise's tone that decided the matter, because the woman went with her without any further ado as Louise took a firm hold of her arm and started to lead her out of the room.

"Do you know this Duke's real name?" Louise asked, after asking the girl her own name.

The girl shook her head, a little bewildered at the situation and also quite drunk, Louise now realized, although she was still with it enough to tell Louise her name was Annette.

"Did your friend leave the party with him?" Louise prodded.

A shrug was the woman's only reaction, which caused Louise to lose her patience. Her tone grew sharp, and any friendliness she had so far made an effort to display disappeared.

"Annette! Tell me if your friend left the party with that man, the one who calls himself 'Duke.'"

At last the severity of the situation seemed to dawn on the woman. Not that she actually understood why it was important, but she understood that something was going on and that it affected her friend.

She finally acknowledged, "Yes, they left together."

22.

THEY CLIMBED INTO THE UNMARKED SQUAD CAR SO THEY COULD talk privately, and Louise could almost feel Susanne's eyes on them from the next car over.

"Did they know each other already?" Louise asked Annette, every single nerve in her body twitching to hear the answer.

"They've been e-mailing each other for a while... I've chatted with him too, but he and I never exchanged e-mails."

"How long ago did they leave?" Louise demanded.

Annette thought for a long time before she estimated that it had probably been a good hour. That fit with when Louise had seen him.

"He was really drunk, you know?" Annette said.

That was not a particularly rea.s.suring piece of information.

"We have to contact your friend," Louise said urgently. "I presume she has a cell phone," Louise said, more as a statement than as a question, and Annette nodded.

"I'll be right back," Louise said. She got out of the car, knocked on Heilmann's window, and asked her to get out, too. Once Heilmann closed her door again and Susanne couldn't hear them, Louise explained that their suspect was very likely with a young woman right now, a woman he had been e-mailing for a while.

They stepped away from the cars and discussed how risky it would be to call her cell phone themselves. That might drive "Duke" or Jesper Bjergholdt, or whatever alias he was going by now, into wounded-prey mode. He might go into a rage or feel forced to attack-or maybe he would run away and try to hide.

"Her name is Stine Mogensen," Louise said. "She's twenty-five, and she left the party with our guy about an hour ago. He must have slipped out in the crowd before I managed to get outside."

Heilmann listened without showing any reaction.

"We have to a.s.sume that they went to her apartment," Louise continued, feeling the tension mounting in her gut. "If that was over an hour ago, something really bad may have already happened."

"Tell the girlfriend to call Stine on her cell phone and get her out of there," Heilmann said. "She could say she needs to see her right away. Or something like that."

"But then we'll lose him," Louise objected.

Heilmann hesitated for a brief instant before continuing, in an authoritative voice, "The most important thing is for us to make sure the girl is safe. I'll send the others out to her address."

Heilmann went to call her male colleagues over.

As Louise walked back toward the car, she caught sight of Camilla out of the corner of her eye, strolling out arm in arm with a man. Even from a distance, Louise could tell he was attractive, but instead of going over and saying hi, she hurriedly got back into the car so Camilla wouldn't see her.

"Where does your friend live?" Louise asked.

Annette was pale. "On Sverrigsgade in Amager," she mumbled.

Louise wrote down the address and apartment number and got out of the car again to find Heilmann.

Camilla and Henning had disappeared, and Michael Stig was already waiting in the car.

"You drive over there, siren and flashers off," Heilmann cautioned. "And make sure you have backup in place at the back door before you go in."

"Shouldn't I go too?" Louise offered.

Heilmann shook her head. "You're going to stay here with me while the girl calls her friend on her cell phone, and then you're going to drive Susanne home."

Louise made another attempt to convince Heilmann, but the sergeant stood her ground even though she knew it would irk Louise to let other officers make the arrest in a case she had worked so hard on.

Heilmann sat down in the back seat of Louise's car and tried to strike up a conversation with Annette, who was gradually sobering up but was still deathly pale. She had apparently given up on understanding what was going on, apart from "Duke" being mixed up in something so serious that the police wanted to get ahold of him. She didn't ask what he'd done, but, understandably enough, was growing more and more concerned about what might happen to her friend.

"Call her now," Heilmann urged Annette.

Annette scrolled through her address book until she found Stine Mogensen's number and then took a deep breath before dialing. She sat anxiously waiting until she heard it ring, then her shoulders relaxed, and she waited.

Louise and Heilmann were so still, it looked as though they were both holding their breath.

"It's going to voicemail," Annette said after a second.

"Try again," Heilmann requested from the back seat.

Annette called again and left an urgent request for Stine to call as soon as she heard the message.

Heilmann thanked Annette for her cooperation and climbed out of the car. As the car door closed, Louise heard Heilmann, already on her phone, ordering the team to enter the apartment.

"Check for sounds or light from outside. If she doesn't open the door, kick it in," Heilmann ordered before she was even back in her car. A moment later, Susanne came and climbed into the back seat of Louise's car, and they took off with Heilmann following so fast that the gravel flew.

The mood in the car was strangely flat, the way you might feel after an engrossing movie, when the audience stays in their seats to collect their thoughts before they're ready to leave the theater. Their show was also over here, at least their part of it.

"What if Stine calls me back?" Annette asked, breaking the silence.

Louise was in the middle of contemplating whether she could just let Annette out here and then drive Susanne home or if she was obligated to drive Annette home as well. Annette's question resolved it for her, because it suddenly hit her that there was actually a small chance that Stine Mogensen and "Duke" were someplace other than Stine's apartment; and if that was the case, the police would still need Annette's help.

Louise turned on the ignition and started driving toward Annette's address in Nrrebro. Susanne hadn't said a word since she'd gotten into the car. Not hi, h.e.l.lo, or anything else. She just sat there staring out the window, as though her thoughts had transported her to another world.

"I'm driving you home now," Louise told Annette. "If Stine calls, tell her you need to talk to her."

Louise spoke as calmly as she could to avoid upsetting Annette any more than necessary. It was better if Annette didn't realize how important it was that they get this right. That would reduce the risk of her being so nervous she messed something up.

"My colleagues are at Stine's apartment now. If she's there, they'll explain why you asked her to call, and that'll be the end of it." Louise drove across Christianhavn Square before continuing: "If Stine calls you back, it'll be because she's not at her apartment when she gets your message. If that happens, then you should just ask her to come over to your place right away. And then call me immediately. Immediately," Louise emphasized.

- AFTER LOUISE DROPPED ANNETTE OFF AND WATCHED UNTIL SHE HAD made it in her front door, she was itching to call Heilmann. The feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that things were about to come to a head. Still, she didn't want Susanne to know how tense she was. She tried to curb her anxiety and flashed Susanne a smile in the rearview mirror.

"You think he's doing it right now, don't you?" Susanne said, instead of returning the smile.

Louise gave up on hiding what she was feeling and nodded as she started driving toward Valby. They were driving down Falkoner Alle when Heilmann called. Louise snapped the handset to her ear instantly before Susanne could hear Heilmann's voice come over the two-way radio's speaker.

"He wasn't there," Heilmann reported succinctly.

"Well, where are they then?" Louise asked, speaking so quietly she imagined she couldn't be heard from the back seat. She glanced discreetly in the rearview mirror to see if Susanne had reacted, but she was leaning her head back against the headrest with her eyes closed.

"She was there," Heilmann said, making Louise take her eyes off Susanne and put them back on the road. "Half asleep and very confused."

Louise had a hard time pinning down the feeling that came over her. It was a combination of disappointment, relief, and frustration at being back to square one.

"They did leave the party together," Heilmann reported. "But they said good-bye when she got on her bike and he kept going on foot."

Louise's fingers tensed around the steering wheel. It was her fault Bjergholdt had gotten away. She should have stopped him from leaving the party before he had a chance to slip out. Self-recrimination filled her head. How stupid she'd been to rely on her cell phone in the warehouse when she knew there was a risk they wouldn't have any reception. She could have left Susanne standing there and hurried over to the exit instead of taking the time to bring Susanne along.

f.u.c.k, she thought, hitting the steering wheel, snapping Susanne out of her reverie. Louise tried to pull herself together, but her composure was crumbling. To her surprise, she longed to snuggle up against Peter, and that p.i.s.sed her off even more because it forced her to admit she needed him on such a visceral level. Suddenly the emptiness started feeding on itself: she had nothing to go home to, no one to comfort her the next morning and tell her she'd done the right thing. Even though he, of all people, had no f.u.c.king idea what the right thing to do even was. It always used to help her feel better, not feel so exposed when she showed up at the morning briefing.

"We're almost there," she announced into the dark car.