Call Me Princess Part 19

Camilla sounded busy and touchy. It didn't sound like she was planning to set down what she was working on to comply with Louise's request.

"If it can wait until I get back in a couple of hours, I'll put together a packet for you," Camilla offered, intentionally packing up her things as audibly as possible as they talked.

Camilla had catapulted through the ranks on Morgenavisen's crime beat in the last year. She had free rein to do what she wanted as long as Terkel Hyer, her editor, could count on as many front-page stories from her as possible. It had been a long time since Camilla had had to call around to the various police precincts to find out what was on their blotters for the day. It had also been a long time since she had been sent to a pretrial hearing; if she ever went to one now, it was to cover a story she had pitched herself. Otherwise, those sorts of mundane a.s.signments now fell to the intern or to Ole Kvist, even though he had been with the paper a lot longer than Camilla.

"I'm on my way out to do an interview for a piece I'm writing tonight. So I'll be here if you stop by later," Camilla said. "I probably won't have time to chat, but I can have the articles ready for you."

It wasn't hard for Louise to figure out that Camilla must be referring to the interview with Susanne. Printing her story while the investigation was still in full swing would obviously be a scoop. But Louise didn't comment on that.

The earliest she could pick up the material would be around six or seven, but she could head straight home from there and read it that evening. Maybe that would help her learn some of the unwritten rules of the online scene that she was ignorant of. Not that Susanne was an experienced online dater, but maybe she had stumbled onto something because she had been so totally raw and honest about what she was looking for.

Louise had already read a couple of the e-mails Bjergholdt and Susanne had written to each other, but then she set them aside again, deciding to wait until she had read Camilla's articles. Now she was back searching for dark-haired men, and she found herself lingering a number of times on profiles that captured her interest. Not because they struck her as anything Bjergholdt might be lurking behind, but because Louise found the guys' self-portrayals intriguing on a purely personal level.

Before leaving, she warned Heilmann that Morganavisen was going to be publishing an interview with Susanne the next morning. Louise was just shutting down the laptop she had been issued for her searches when Suhr walked in.

"Hey, do you think you can get Camilla Lind to reprint the information about the suspect we're looking for, along with the interview?" he asked. "It'd be good to keep that fresh in people's minds."

"I don't think I'm going to be talking to her," Louise said. Why doesn't he f.u.c.king pick up the phone and call her himself? she thought.

He muttered something she didn't catch before he turned around and disappeared.

- SHE ENJOYED HER BIKE RIDE UP TO ROSENBORG CASTLE GARDENS, just catching sight of the Renaissance verdigris spires over the wide-crowned trees, then turning north onto Kronprinsessegade, where Morgenavisen's offices occupied a beautifully restored two-hundred-year-old neocla.s.sical building. She parked her bike and headed up the stairs to the third floor, where the crime desk was located. Camilla was there, concentrating on writing, when Louise walked in.

Camilla looked up from her screen, but seemed in another world.

"Do you have time for a cup of coffee?" Louise asked.

Her friend shook her head and said, "My deadline is in an hour and I still need to get it okayed." Camilla nodded at what she'd written.

Louise was glad that Susanne had remembered to ask to read through the piece before it was published-if she indeed was the one Camilla had interviewed. Louise briefly contemplated mentioning that Suhr wanted her to reprint the description of the suspect, but decided to drop it.

"All right. Let's get together another time," Louise said, taking the plastic binder containing the articles Camilla had printed out for her. Camilla had changed since Henning had entered the picture. She no longer had the same need to spend time chilling out with her friends, or maybe Louise just noticed it more since she was living alone now.

"Henning and his brother are stopping by tonight. You're welcome to come over. Markus will be there too," Camilla said, explaining that Christina had picked him up from school.

That babysitter was G.o.d's gift to the single mother. She had known Markus since he was in kindergarten and jumped at the chance whenever Camilla couldn't pick him up from his after-school program.

"No, thanks, but that's sweet of you," Louise replied. She just wasn't up to it, but it was sweet of Camilla, and she really did want to meet Henning-just not tonight. They gave each other a quick kiss on the cheek good-bye. Louise walked back down to her bicycle and rode south along The Lakes separating downtown Copenhagen from Frederiksberg, turning onto Gammel Kongevej.

- SHE WASN'T MUCH THE WISER BY THE TIME SHE FINISHED READING Camilla's articles about the dating culture later that evening, but it had occurred to her that the online dating scene could be divided into two groups: people who set up a profile exclusively to find a partner or companion, and people for whom this became a lifestyle. Susanne, Christina Lerche, and Karin Hvenegaard belonged to the former group, whereas Bjergholdt was in the latter. She still couldn't decide if it was meeting strange women that drove him, or the knowledge that he could hide his true ident.i.ty-or if he entirely lacked those kinds of psychological motivations and was just using the Internet as a supply source for his fetish. Either way, he was icy and calculating from the start and exploited the anonymity the Internet provided. Or maybe he had started out with more genuine intentions and discovered how much freedom he had later. There was no way to know, she concluded, as she tried to piece together a pattern in her mind.

On the other hand, she had no doubt that the Internet and that type of online contact had now become a part of his life. He traveled in those circles. That was proved to her when he showed up at the mixer. Those two young women had known him. She still hadn't heard back from Stine Mogensen, actually, so she must not have found him yet.

Louise tried to picture him. What the f.u.c.k kind of person was he? Chivalrous, courteous, polite, she wrote on a piece of paper. Orders multiple-course dinners and calvados with his after-dinner coffee. Invites people to the quaint old wharf at Nyhavn, goes to hip dating mixers. He's urbane, she concluded. He's familiar with Copenhagen and knows his way around here. He walks his dates back to the subway, and shows up at Susanne's apartment.

Something dawned on her as she was reading Camilla's articles. It didn't matter so much where you met online, but rather that you had a life in the virtual world at all. You met new people over the Internet, formed new connections. People went online to play Yahtzee. Camilla had written about a woman who spent eight hours a day playing Yahtzee online with people she had never met in real life. Her best friends were people she knew from the site. As the virtual dice tumbled across the screen, they would write back and forth to each other, and that obviously allowed them to form close, intimate bonds.

When she had first read about that woman, Louise had a hard time taking it seriously. She was about forty, was apparently quite normal-seeming and extroverted, and didn't have the least bit of trouble getting to know other people, either at work or in her free time. In the article, she discussed the world that had opened up to her when she started surfing the Net. She talked mostly about her Yahtzee friends, calling those friendships both deeper and far more intimate than the ones she had with her friends who she hung out with in the real world. She made a big deal about saying that she had never felt a need to meet these online friends face to face. What they shared belonged in the Yahtzee universe, and it was better not to mix that with her everyday life. But that didn't mean that it was less important to her. She had made sure to emphasize that at the end of the article.

Louise understood exactly what Camilla meant when she compared the woman's two lives to people who had a vacation home somewhere remote but spent their everyday lives in the city. Those two lifestyles didn't necessarily have to merge, either. Maybe the appeal was just that, switching back and forth between rubber rain-boots and stilettos, as Camilla had poetically put it. All the same, it struck Louise that living in a cyberworld to that degree could outcompete living in the real world. Scary, especially since Louise mostly used the Internet only to Google things, check the weather, or e-mail. With a sigh, she gathered the articles together into a pile and got ready for bed.

24.

THE SUSANNE HANSSON ARTICLE FILLED MOST OF THE FRONT PAGE the next morning, and Camilla's interview continued on a second page. Louise folded up the paper after a cursory skim. She also noted the box in the lower right corner with the photo of Suhr and a reprint of the description of the suspect, which had already appeared on Tuesday: "Contact the Police," the heading read, and people did. Men and women both. In droves.

Louise grabbed her head in dismay at the men who called in claiming that they were the man the paper was warning people about. They started tracing those calls, but nothing had come of that so far.

And then there were countless messages from women who had been attacked by a man whose description or M.O. matched Bjergholdt's.

On the other hand, the flood of new, relevant tips had restored Suhr's optimism. "We have at least twice as many leads now," he said with satisfaction when the group gathered that morning to see where they stood.

They all agreed Bjergholdt was the person who had murdered Christina Lerche and raped Susanne Hansson and Karin Hvene-gaard. They were also pretty sure he was behind two of the tips they had received, but that would be hard to prove. They showed the victims the stills of him from the CCTV footage and the victims confirmed that it looked like the same man, but that alone wasn't strong enough evidence to prevent a good defense attorney from picking apart the police charges even before the prosecution had a chance to present its case. Not that they were close to bringing anyone in at this stage anyway.

- WHEN LOUISE RETURNED FROM THE BRIEFING, SHE SAT DOWN IN front of her computer, her mind wandering. Her stomach felt empty, and it occurred to her that she hadn't had breakfast. She just hadn't felt hungry, and by the time she finally did, she had a cigarette and a cup of coffee instead. Before, she would have gotten by on mineral water and apples, but that wasn't enough anymore. Peter called and asked if they could get together for a cup of coffee over the weekend so they could work out how to divvy up their joint savings account and the possessions they had purchased together.

Suddenly the weekend seemed daunting. She caught herself wishing that something would happen so she could bury herself in her work and the time would fly by. After a lot of cajoling, she had agreed to go out with Flemming Friday night. They had spoken only once since he had been over, and she didn't want to spend a whole evening talking about her failed relationship. On the other hand, she didn't have any other plans, and it would do her good to get out.

She felt another wave of nausea after she ate a slightly stale piece of bread with b.u.t.ter she found in the kitchenette. She only just made it to the bathroom in time to crouch over the toilet bowl. Once back in her office, she found the number and called her doctor. A nagging suspicion had been creeping into her consciousness the last couple of days. At first she had tried to ignore it, but it continued to push its way to the front of her mind.

"He doesn't have any openings tomorrow," the secretary at her doctor's office said emphatically, "and Monday the urgent cases from over the weekend will be coming in, so unless it's an emergency, the first available appointment is Tuesday."

Louise grudgingly conceded that it was not an emergency and made the appointment.

- THE NEXT DAY, LOUISE FORCED HERSELF TO GO ALONG WHEN LARS came in and said it was time for lunch and that he had to go to the cafeteria because he had forgotten his lunch on the kitchen counter at home. There was a throng of people and a heavy odor of food. Again Louise's stomach lurched. She considered stopping by the pharmacy on the way home so she could buy a test and find out for sure, but the idea was so awful that she just couldn't face knowing. G.o.d, what a sucky accident that would be, she thought, following Lars to the end of the cafeteria line.

She stared dully at the fruit basket sitting next to the cash register and looked at the floor as the guys ahead of her filled their plates with steaming helpings of pork meatb.a.l.l.s in curry sauce. She took a piece of rye bread and a banana and was ready to head back down to the office.

"Come on," her partner said, nodding toward the long cafeteria table.

Louise reluctantly followed. She really just wanted to go back to the office and eat there so she could keep working. She had just briefed the lieutenant on an idea she'd had the night before and really wanted to get started.

"Fine by me," Suhr had said, hurrying on his way.

She suddenly realized that Suhr was going easy on her. He was babying her because she had told him Peter had moved in with someone else, and Suhr thought searching dating sites would be easier on her while he had everyone else out searching for Bjergholdt and his victims. She was so furious at the special treatment that she couldn't stop herself and, before she knew it, she was standing in his office, taking him to task, and lecturing him about how the Internet had become the preferred reality for lots of people. She was quite a way into her monologue before she noticed that Sergeant Heilmann was sitting in the chair across from Suhr, watching the whole scene with disapproval on her face.

"Uh, hi," Louise said, nodding at Heilmann.

Then she turned back to Suhr and continued, while slinking back toward the door, "I suppose I could just search more later if you'd rather put me on something else."

She stared him intently in the eyes with all the strength she could muster, hoping to convince him that she didn't require any special treatment.

Suhr looked like a man who was finally ready to admit that he didn't understand women. He had no idea what Louise was trying to tell him, so he decided to pretend she hadn't said the last part. Instead he just gave her a friendly, if slightly bewildered, nod and asked her to keep doing what she was doing.

- SITTING AT THE TABLE IN THE CAFETERIA WITH LARS, LOUISE discovered that she had forgotten how nice it was to listen to the conversation at the lunch table. She put off her work, fetched a cup of coffee, and got an update on the case about the man they had charged with murdering his ex-wife. The charges had been dropped, and Willumsen was so frustrated that he had decided to take a long weekend with his wife, and no one could remember him ever doing that before.

Everyone agreed that the most frustrating part was that there was practically a hundred-percent chance that the guy was guilty, but because it was perfectly reasonable that his fingerprints were all over her apartment and because a witness had felt pressured into making a false statement about something not pivotal to the case, but a false statement nonetheless, the whole thing had fallen apart. He'd walked out of Vestre Prison a free man and had already sent his children out of the country. Unless they found some new evidence, the police were going to be forced to accept that he would get away with stabbing his wife to death and they wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

"That's the way it is. We're going to have to close the case. You just end up beating yourself up if you can't let it go and admit that sometimes luck and circ.u.mstances favor the bad guys," said Detective Pihl, who'd worked closely on the case, with a resigned shrug.

Louise agreed, but didn't like hearing this, because the Bjergholdt case could easily end up the same way. If they couldn't ID him soon, the case would land in the same cold-case pile, she thought. Their problem was just the opposite, though-they had the evidence, but not the guy.

- WHILE SHE WAS IN THE CAFETERIA, LOUISE RECEIVED A TEXT MESSAGE from Camilla: "Do you want to get out of town this weekend?" Camilla and Markus were going to Sor, and Louise was tempted, but she was seeing Flemming that night and having coffee with Peter on Sat.u.r.day, so she sent a brief text back saying she couldn't and then sat down at her computer.

Night.w.a.tch.dk. She needed an account to get in. She didn't have one, so she had to sign up for one first. She wanted to get Lars to help her, but he was gone when she got back from the cafeteria.

Well, I suppose I can probably figure it out on my own, she thought, trying to think of a login name. She ended up using initials, just not her own. Instead, she stole her sister-in-law's. Trine had changed her last name to Rick after she married Mikkel, but she kept her maiden name as her middle name, and it grated on Louise's ears whenever she heard her say Trine Madsen Rick. It just didn't go together.

Louise typed in TMR and hoped the site would accept a login name that was only three characters long. It didn't. There had to be four. To her own childish amus.e.m.e.nt, she deleted Rick from her sister-in-law's name, made her into Trine Madsen again, and shortened that to TRIM, which the site accepted. A colorful welcome screen popped up, and the menu bar on the left explained how to navigate on the site and which bars, nightclubs, and dance clubs you could visit on Night.w.a.tch.dk. The goal was for late-night party animals to get photographed by Night.w.a.tch's photographers, who roamed around the city, and the pictures would be posted on the site.

Obviously you could also use your own camera. The site had really taken off, now that so many people had cameras in their cell phones. So people texted their pictures to Night.w.a.tch.dk and wrote who they were out with or who they had met at the bar and maybe a brief comment. You used your Night.w.a.tch profile name, and the pictures were posted right away. So then if you were surfing the site from home or on your smart phone and you saw a cute guy hanging out by the bar in one of these clubs, you could either hurry down there and hope he was still there, or you could write him if the picture was tagged with his profile name. Based on the pictures featured on the home page, it was obvious that not everybody realized they were being photographed, and yet their friends tagged them in the photos anyway.

Louise clicked on "Thursday" to see who she could have met if she had been in downtown Copenhagen the previous night: some guys named Ssser, Herring, and Danny stood awkwardly with their arms around each other smiling at the lens on the phone. Louise guessed it was a cell-phone camera because of the blurry images. She sighed when she realized there were eight pages of the same kind of tiny thumbnails she would have to click and zoom if she wanted to have any hope of making out the faces-and these thumbnails were just from one of the many downtown locations. She was starting to get a sense of how many pictures there must be for Friday and Sat.u.r.day nights.

Tons of names and tons of drunken people. There were also pictures of people engaging in various types of transactions. She noted that she ought to tell drug enforcement about this while she was at it, surprised that people let themselves be photographed like this.

She kept going, zooming pictures, closing them again, and clicking the next one as fast as her laptop would permit. There were a few people her age! They were sitting at the bar drinking mixed drinks. The caption said "Sip" and "Motor3." Louise double-clicked "Sip" and pulled up her profile. There weren't any pictures on her profile, but you could e-mail her. Louise closed that and tried "Motor3." His profile included a good selection of photos.

Lars was back, although Louise hadn't really noticed him come in. She was deep in concentration, staring at her screen. She had just realized there were pictures from the dating mixer out in Holmen, but since she was being systematic about the whole thing, she was moving back through time and had only gotten to Sat.u.r.day night so far. There hadn't been any sign of Bjergholdt in the places she had tried, and she also knew there was only a minimal chance that she would suddenly recognize him in one of the pictures. But he had been at the mixer, and that demonstrated to her that he was the kind of guy who went out on the town, so it was worth a try.

Heilmann stopped by periodically after that and looked over Louise's shoulder. The sergeant had been much quicker than Suhr to appreciate what Louise had found. The image quality of the mixer photos varied dramatically. In most of them, the lighting was so bad it was hard to see much but blurry figures standing against a dark background.

"We probably won't be able to use them in a lineup with picture quality like that," Heilmann said before returning to her own office. "But if you find him, we'll get a tech to see if he can clean it up a little."

Louise saw a lot of old friends as she leafed through, clip by clip. Stine Mogensen and her friend Annette showed up in several of the pictures, and she realized it would take more than "Duke" and Friday night's experience to keep them away from the nightlife in the city.

He wasn't there, she determined, feeling empty inside without knowing quite why she had let herself get her hopes up so much during her search. She closed the alb.u.m of photos from the mixer and moved on to last Thursday without much enthusiasm. She was just about fed up with the countless photos. She jumped when her phone rang. She glanced at the display, but didn't recognize the number.

"Unit A, Louise Rick speaking."

"Hi, it's Susanne. What did you think of my interview?"

Confused and mentally depleted, it took her a second to remember who Susanne was and what interview she was talking about. She looked up from her computer screen and focused on trying to snap out of it.

"I actually haven't had a chance to read it yet," Louise admitted, glancing over at today's paper, which was sitting on her desk. "But I have it right here. Were you happy with it?"

"Very. I just talked to Camilla, who told me that the paper got a lot of positive feedback on it. People want to support me, make sure I'm okay, and help me find a new place to live and another job," Susanne said, sounding happy.

"That's great! But remember to keep a low profile," Louise urged. She noticed what a damper that put on Susanne's cheerful voice, and she regretted saying it immediately. It was amazing what an article like that could do. People came together when it was spelled out on paper for them that their fellow man was in need.

"I don't mean you shouldn't accept the help people are offering you," Louise hastened to add. "Just that you shouldn't rush into a new apartment or job right now while the paper is set to follow your every move."

"I wasn't planning to," Susanne responded a little stiffly, continuing in a more businesslike tone, "but I agreed with Camilla that I would write a sort of diary about my life in hiding, about my thoughts, and what it's like having to move because you don't feel safe anymore."

Louise didn't know if she should laugh or chew Susanne out. She decided to do neither, although her contemplations were cut short when Susanne continued, "I actually called to say you don't need to worry about getting me a computer anymore. Morgenavisen is letting me borrow one."

Louise rested her forehead in the palm of her hand. She didn't know if it was bad or good for Susanne to have ended up in Camilla's...o...b..t. Maybe it would help her make a clean break from her old life and create her new ident.i.ty, or maybe it would turn her into a media sensation-some poor thing people felt bad about for a while and then forgot about again just as quickly.

"Okay, I'll shelve the request," Louise said, "but don't make any agreement with the newspaper that would allow readers to contact you directly, because then there's a risk he will."

Susanne mumbled something or other unintelligible, and Louise predicted that Morgenavisen would provide an e-mail address when they ran Susanne's diary. Doubtless there were plenty of readers who would make use of the opportunity to contact her. Louise would bring this up with Suhr and Heilmann.

"What phone are you calling from?" Louise asked.

Susanne's phone number usually showed up on her caller ID, so if the call had come from that number, it should have shown on the display.

"It's a phone Morgenavisen gave me so I wouldn't have to use mine."

Now Louise saw what was going on. The newspaper was staking its claim. Camilla was on the story, and she was making sure no one else could get ahold of Susanne. Smart thinking, Camilla! Go in and ask for a raise, she thought. At the same time, it told her that the paper obviously thought there could be more victims. That the story was big enough that it would headline all summer. Otherwise, they wouldn't have gone to such lengths to make sure they had the exclusive rights to Susanne's story. She pictured Camilla and imagined her weekend in the countryside with her son and boyfriend. Here's hoping her fairy tale wouldn't be interrupted by a new rape, Louise thought bitterly.

"Well, I'll talk to you soon," Louise said when she couldn't think of anything else. When you got right down to it, Susanne wasn't really doing anything wrong. She was just doing what most people would, and at least her mother wasn't anywhere in the picture. Not that Louise could see, anyway.

When Louise updated Suhr on this development, he decided he wanted to talk to Camilla himself and find out what her plans were for Susanne. He didn't want to see the case turn into some kind of media circus, as he put it, but if the paper could guarantee that her address would remain secret and they filtered the e-mail she received he didn't have any objections. Louise guessed that Camilla would humor him and agree to notify him right away if any interesting messages came in. Louise saw that Camilla had found a way to make sure she stayed one step ahead of the police. Now suddenly she was the one who would notify them, not the other way around.

When Louise looked at her watch, she realized she only had an hour to get home, shower, and change before she was supposed to meet Flemming. She quickly shut off her computer and raced out the door.

- JUST A TAD LATE, LOUISE STOOD, SLIGHTLY WINDED, PEERING AT THE densely populated bar counter, but there was no sign of Flemming La.r.s.en. She walked over to an open table in the corner near the kitchen and had just sat down when he walked in the door.

"Have you been waiting long?" he asked apologetically.

She rea.s.sured him she had just gotten there herself. They moved into the restaurant section of the cafe, where he had made a reservation.

Louise felt awkward. She was wearing more makeup than she usually did for work. She was wearing a turquoise tunic from Pureheart-borrowed from Camilla-over her jeans, and for once she was letting her long, unruly curls fall freely. Fleming, on the other hand, looked like he had come straight from work.

"I got called out just as I was getting ready to come," he said, sensing she was feeling a little overdressed.

She had a sinking feeling in her stomach, involuntarily imagining that a new rape had been reported after she left the office.

He shook his head.

"A stabbing," he said. "I met Willumsen at the scene."

Louise shook her head in confusion, saying, "I thought Willumsen was away for a long weekend with his wife."

"He was, but he arrived right after me, so he must have ditched his wife at the hotel the instant Suhr called," Flemming said, smiling. "He feels sure this was a revenge killing. It was the same man who was released the other day for the murder of his ex-wife in Nykbing Sjaelland we were speaking about at lunch. He was stabbed in the chest and the back. It looks like more than one attacker. Willumsen's guess is that the guy was bragging a little too loudly about the charges being dropped, which must have provoked the woman's family."

Louise listened without feeling anything. One murder case took over for another. The man had been going to go free, even though he had murdered his ex-wife. Now he was dead. Louise thought about the children, who had been sent abroad and no longer had a father or a mother to come home to.

She let Flemming order for them, watching him as he studied the wine list. She suddenly realized how much she longed for companionship, now that she was out and surrounded by people having a good time. She hadn't felt that in ages.

She finally gave in at four in the morning and let Flemming help her into a cab. She had had way too much to drink and smoked way too many cigarettes. Even in her fog, she was a little ashamed that she had gotten so carried away and out of control, but it had been a fun night.