Only One Life: A Novel Part 10

13.

WHEN CAMILLA STEPPED ACROSS THE THRESHOLD OF THE al-Abd family's apartment in the yellow-brick row house a little after eight-thirty, she noticed how densely packed the place was with furniture. Dressers, shoe racks, a display case, a row of hooks above so that a thick blanketlike layer of clothes hung over the rest. She smiled and introduced herself to a short, thin woman who only came up to Camilla's shoulders and wore an attractive black scarf over her head.

"I'm Camilla Lind. I'm with Morgenavisen," she said, and then hurriedly continued, "I'm so sorry about what happened to your daughter."

Even though it was the most glaring cliche to fire off at the woman, Camilla meant it. After she had arrived in town the day before, she had taken a spin through downtown Holbaek to track down some teenagers who had known Samra and were willing to talk about her. The picture of the young immigrant girl that had emerged was basically no more heartrending than if it had been any other young girl who'd been killed in the same way, but it also didn't help make the situation any more comprehensible. Extremely sweet, helpful, fun, smart ... it had been a long list of superlatives. But what had struck Camilla most was how raw the teenagers' grief was. They had been genuinely floored by a level of pain and turmoil that they didn't comprehend. They understood that the worst had happened and they were responding to it, but they had in no way been prepared to have the foundations of their lives yanked out from underneath them that way. The safe and innocent world they'd known had disappeared all of a sudden, pushing them several steps closer to the seriousness and sorrows of life.

"I'd really like to talk to you a little," Camilla continued.

Sada al-Abd started retreating back into the apartment, eyes downcast to the floor. Camilla knew she was thirty-seven years old and that she understood and spoke some Danish. She heard a young child's voice from inside the living room, and a second later a cute little girl with dark curls dancing around her head came to the doorway, casting a slightly shy glance at the female stranger. In the background Camilla spotted a little boy, who was sitting on the floor playing with some blocks.

The mother said something to her daughter in a language Camilla didn't understand, and the girl smiled, her mouth full of chalk-white teeth that would have made a great ad for Arla, the dairy company, and disappeared back into the living room to join her little brother.

"I didn't want to bother you," Camilla quickly told the mother. "But I was talking to some of Samra's friends in town yesterday and they told me such nice things about your daughter. I thought you might like to hear what they said."

She waited to see how much of her Danish the mother seemed to understand. The woman's eyes were still trained on the floor, but she nodded weakly at Camilla's words. However, as soon as Camilla finished talking, the woman shook her head and softly said, "You have to go."

Camilla stood there for a moment, looking at the Jordanian woman. She couldn't tell if there was fear mixed with the profound grief emanating from her.

"We could also meet somewhere else to talk," Camilla suggested, making another attempt. "I'm going to have to write about this story, with or without your cooperation. But it would be better if you would talk to me."

Again the woman shook her head.

"I can't talk to you." She had a thick accent in Danish, but she was very understandable.

Camilla sensed motion behind her before she heard a voice say, "What are you doing here? Leave us alone."

A man had entered without her having heard him, and when she turned around he was standing right behind her.

"You must not come here and bother us...."

The man's voice grew louder and Camilla tried to explain that she was not trying to bother anyone, that she just wanted to talk to them about what had happened. But everything she said was drowned out by his yelling.

Then he turned his rage on Sada. "What did you tell her?" he yelled.

She shook her head. "Nothing."

"I'm calling the police," he screamed at Camilla. "You need to get out of here NOW!"

She watched how he punched the b.u.t.tons on his phone, shifting angrily from one foot to the other in his eagerness to get through. Sada stood still, as if nailed to the spot, her eyes on her own feet, as Ibrahim moved to the living room to talk.

Camilla moved a step closer to her and said, "I know you reported him for abuse and spent some time at a shelter, but then you came back to him. How could you do that to your daughter?"

The mother jumped as the import of the words. .h.i.t her. She looked up and stared Camilla right in the eyes but didn't say anything.

The man's infuriated voice was echoing in the background. He had finally gotten through to a human.

"I'm staying at the Station Hotel and I hope you'll decide to talk to me. But I'm going to be writing my articles whether you do or not."

Camilla nodded a quick farewell before the husband returned. As she walked down the stairs, she briefly contemplated whether she ought to call the Holbaek Police herself and let them know she was the one who had stopped by to see the family and triggered this enormous outburst of anger. But that might be blowing things out of proportion, she thought.

The sun was shining, enveloping the parking lot between the buildings in a soft, golden sheen, and there was some warmth in its rays despite the season. Camilla b.u.t.toned her cardigan and climbed into the driver's seat of her car. Well, that didn't go well, she thought. It would be hard to recover from that beginning. She supposed the ball was in Samra's mother's court now, since Camilla hadn't had a chance to say she would come back. The father would skin his wife alive if he found Camilla interviewing her in the apartment. Plus there were the two little kids. It would end in chaos.

"I'm going to kill that wh.o.r.e."

"You mustn't say kill. Or die. What are you doing to us? Can't you understand that they're going to come and take my children away from me if you say things like that? Stop it!"

The heated voices could be heard in the background, but the interpreter's monotone translation remained calm and unaffected by the things that were being said.

"You're ruining it for us, and we'll all end up in there...."

"In jail," the interpreter explained, glancing up at Louise, who was standing with the rest of the team, listening in on the audio surveillance feed.

"For G.o.d's sake, don't ruin anything else," the interpreter continued, concentrating again on the unintelligible words whirling around the Danish police officers' heads.

Again a man's voice on the tape: "I didn't say kill. I said I'll hit you!"

"Why are you saying these things?"

"I'm going crazy. I'm going to kill myself too."

"You mustn't say that word at all. They're going to take my babies away from me."

The woman started crying loudly.

"Get out, get out! I don't want to hear any more...."

A door slammed and Storm impatiently asked for the tape to be stopped so they could discuss what they'd heard.

During the morning briefing, Storm had informed them that they were going to have to do without him for the rest of the day. With a little embarra.s.sment he had explained that he certainly knew it was impractical and that it was coming at an unfortunate time, but the appointment had been made a long time ago. He was going to teach a continuing education course at the Police Academy Center in Avno and he had to be there until ten o'clock that night because they were having a big farewell dinner.

Louise got the sense that he was anxious to get out of there, but he obviously also felt like he had to be present while they prepared, before bringing Samra's family back in for another round of questioning an hour later.

They were brought into the interrogation room at ten o'clock. The National Police's staff interpreter, Fahid, had arrived early that morning so he could listen in as the family woke up. Normally they would have had the audio material transcribed and would have waited until they had the translated transcript in their hands, but Storm had decided that there was enough time pressure in this case that they had to skip that step. So instead they had the interpreter doing a simultaneous interpretation directly from the tape, which would allow them to pick up the last few important details before the couple arrived.

"He calls his daughter a wh.o.r.e," Soren Velin said, offended.

Fahid shook his head and explained that it wasn't Samra but the female interpreter who was being called a wh.o.r.e.

"He's accusing her of stabbing him in the back during the questioning. He's very upset during this conversation," Fahid said. "They were apparently just visited by a journalist, who was standing in the doorway talking to his wife when he came home, and he feels like everyone is against him."

"What was that stuff about the kids?" Louise asked.

"That has to do with the problems stemming from Sada's stay in the shelter. A note was placed in the file that the state was considering removing the two youngest children from the home if the internal family problems continued."

"She's accusing him indirectly of having killed their daughter," Skipper concluded, referring to the statement that the father mustn't ruin anything else.

"I don't get it," Louise said heatedly. "He was completely crushed when he found out the murder victim was his daughter. What the h.e.l.l kind of charade is this?"

Mik nodded in agreement. He was apparently also having trouble reconciling how this could be the same man who'd been so upset to learn of his daughter's death.

They stood around quietly, digesting what they'd heard, before moving into the command room and taking their seats around the table. Storm pulled on his jacket, grabbed his computer bag and the large, square black briefcase containing all his teaching materials, and then he was out the door with a brief nod.

Ruth had a stack of plastic folders ready, which she handed out. "Here are all the facts on the al-Abd family," she said. "About their stay at the shelter too."

"The father can be a real p.r.i.c.k," Bengtsen began, explaining that he had some peripheral awareness of Ibrahim al-Abd, both from the local street scene and from Stark, the company where Bengtsen's brother-in-law was in charge of the department where Samra's father and brother worked. "But he's also very well liked by his co-workers. As long as things run smoothly, he's cheerful and amenable, but he's got a short fuse."

"I can believe that," Mik said, rubbing his nose and seeming lost in thought for a moment.

"Well, in spite of everything, Samra's mother must have some backbone," Louise said, thinking it would take guts to report your husband for domestic abuse and then end up going back home again. "She's not a coward."

Skipper got up and took a handful of sodas out of the fridge and put them on the table, sending the bottle opener around.

"Nah, but if it was the father who was responsible for Samra's murder, then it didn't really pay off for the mother to have reported him for his violence, did it?" Velin contributed.

"The father's brother in Benlose says that he visited Ibrahim and the family on Tuesday evening the way he does every week," Mik said, glancing down at his notepad. "He describes Samra as a sweet girl, but at the same time said that there had been a few problems lately, trouble getting her to stay away from the boys. The Danish boys."

"That sounds a little exaggerated," Louise exclaimed in surprise.

"Did he want to go into any more detail on that?" Dean asked.

Before Mik had a chance to respond, Louise interrupted, telling everyone about the picture Samra's mother had found in her daughter's wallet.

When Louise finished, Mik shook his head and said the father's brother wouldn't say anything concrete. "He does not generally consider Ibrahim to be particularly violent, but he did say that if that kind of thing happens, of course you have to take action and get the girl in line before things get totally out of hand."

"But we're not talking about a dog that needs a little behavioral correction," Skipper commented.

"It doesn't make any sense that a fifteen-year-old girl would do anything that went so much against her parents' wishes that they'd rather kill her," Ruth Lange said, plopping down onto the edge of the table.

"This kind of thing isn't logical," Skipper countered. "We'll never accept that things like this happen. And I don't give a d.a.m.n if this is part of their religion," he continued.

"Cultural tradition," Louise interjected, but she really didn't want to get into that with a group of co-workers she'd just met. It was easier to have this conversation with people who knew each other, because every time someone made it clear where they stood on this issue, you found yourself in deep water.

"It doesn't have anything to do with religion or Islam. Honor and shame are part of their cultural heritage. Men fight for their honor and fear that women are bringing shame to them. Therefore all women must be controlled so they don't mess things up for everyone," Dean explained.

"There's also that thing about some families regarding women as property, thus making it totally okay to beat them and treat them as chattels," Velin said, both indignant and baffled that people could think like that.

Dean nodded at him, agreeing that unfortunately that was not uncommon.

"Did the father's brother say anything else?" Bengtsen asked, putting an end to their contemplations of global cultural differences. "Did he say why Samra's parents went out to see him in Benlose again so soon, when they'd just seen each other?"

Mik sat there studying the folder Ruth had given him, and then shook his head. "Just that it was because they were worried about Samra."

Before they wrapped up the meeting, to get ready for the next round of questioning with Samra's parents and her older brother, Louise reported on her conversation with Dicta Moller the previous evening.

"It turns out that Samra tinkered with her school schedule to give herself a couple of free periods each week when she could escape her parents' control for a little while, so she did occasionally do something they didn't know about," Louise concluded just as the phone rang to let them know the al-Abd family had arrived.

She and Mik walked to their office together.

"I'll be back from the school as soon as I've spoken to Samra's four friends," Louise said. "And we'll see if I can twist anything out of them."

They had agreed to split up, so Mik went to partic.i.p.ate in questioning the family while Louise went to talk to Samra's school friends, and they had both turned down the offer of help from a couple of local a.s.sistant detectives. Louise realized she had misjudged her new partner when she had a.s.sumed he was lazy. He actually took more work on himself than he a.s.signed her.

"Good luck," he called after her as she walked away.

"Same to you. You'll need it more."

Mik smiled at her and tipped his chair back a little, running his hand through his hair and making a face. "I suppose I'll have to try to go a little easier on Hamid if I want to keep him from shutting down right away," Mik said, and for the first time Louise got the sense that her new partner didn't feel so uptight with her anymore.

"I'll see you," she said, stuffing her car keys into her pocket on her way out the door.

14.

LOUISE LOOKED AROUND THE EMPTY FACULTY LOUNGE. There was a long table and several small cl.u.s.ters of sofas, stacks of books and newspapers, and a couple of empty coffee cups that had been left behind. It was bright and airy with a couple of colored reproductions hanging on the walls, and though it was an old school, it had obviously been renovated within the last few years. She had an appointment when cla.s.ses got out to meet the four girls who'd been closest to Samra. School was canceled for the rest of the day, but Jette Petersen had asked permission for their cla.s.s to meet for a memorial service in the gym before Louise took over.

"I'll just get them all out the door," Jette had said when they had spoken that morning.

Maybe she should have waited until Monday, Louise thought, walking over to the window, but then the whole weekend would have pa.s.sed before she got a sense of the girl's circle of friends. She saw a rented bus parking along the sidewalk, emptying its load of small children with wet hair and swimming gear in their hands. She followed them with her eyes as the herd disappeared across the playground.

The door opened and Louise turned around and said h.e.l.lo to a man, who gave her a funny look, wondering who she was.

She introduced herself and explained that she was waiting for Samra's teacher. Jette Petersen's co-worker just nodded at her and walked over to the table that served as a kitchenette and poured water into the coffee maker.

"It's a sad story," he grunted when he was done. The machine started gurgling a second later.

Louise quietly agreed with him.

"But who says the family's behind it?" he asked, nodding at the morning papers that were sitting on the long table. Both front pages prominently featured the words HONOR KILLING. "She may just as easily have been the victim of a crime the family wasn't behind. Isn't that kind of jumping to conclusions?" he asked in a tone that made Louise feel as if he was holding her accountable for the coverage.

She hurried to say that of course someone else could easily have been behind it. "But there's not really any motive to suggest that," Louise continued, trying not to sound defensive.

Silence hung in the air between them and she took a seat. The coffee maker finished gurgling and the man pulled a couple of clean mugs out of the dishwasher. He asked her if she wanted anything in hers. She said "Milk, please" and asked if he might know anything the police hadn't heard yet, since he had brought all this up.

He shook his head and said that it just seemed to him as if they were taking the path of least resistance. "You're going after the easiest target," he said, taking a seat. "If it had been a Danish family, you'd be searching for the perpetrator everywhere but inside the family."

Really? You think so? Louise thought. "The second we have any other leads to follow, I promise you we will."