Only One Life: A Novel Part 24

31.

"DICTA MLLER WAS ONE OF THE MOST TALENTED AND promising models I've worked with. She had a natural luminosity that glowed through the camera's lens and stuck. I don't doubt for a second that she had a big international career ahead of her, on par with other great Danish fashion models like Louise P or Lykke May. It's a great loss for the Danish modeling world that something so dreadful could happen to her."

Oh, just shut up, Louise thought, shaking her head once she was done reading. She folded up the newspaper and dropped it on Mik's desk. She'd spotted it when she was eating breakfast and had brought the paper back with her. Tue Sunds occupied the whole front page and two pages inside the paper.

"He d.a.m.n well isn't upset about it," she said, nodding at the front page.

"No, it looks like he knows how to promote himself," her partner agreed, pulling the paper over to skim through the article.

"When are we going out to Benlose?" Louise asked and added that they really ought to pick up Ibrahim's brother before he drove in to open his shop at ten o'clock.

"We're leaving as soon as you're ready," Mik said, tearing himself away from the paper.

There was a relaxed intimacy between them. She had spent a second night out at his farm, and the situation had transformed from being a painful mistake to a controlled attraction, which filled her with warmth. They agreed that what they had together was nice, but that it shouldn't interfere with their work. She watched him as he put on his jacket. He had a calming effect on her, and although his slightly edgy manner and lanky frame weren't things she immediately a.s.sociated with security, he held her in a way that made her feel like she'd come home.

"I'm eager to hear what he has to say about their being arrested," Louise said as she led the way to the car.

"I'm never going home to my parents again. Their wrath is so great and they're so ashamed of me that it has clouded their minds and warped their hearts. How can people who are tied together by blood be so cold to each other? How can anyone who used to love me suddenly want me dead? I ran into my aunt on the street, and when she saw me she crossed to walk on the other side. I don't know how much longer I can take this."

Camilla was far away, lost in her own thoughts, when the door to her office opened and Terkel Hoyer came in.

"What did you want?" he asked, standing in the doorway.

Camilla picked up the clipping and read aloud.

"Will it never end?" he sighed when she was done. Then he continued. "That was good spotting. We'll bring it up again to show that strict rulings and long sentences aren't enough to stop this kind of thing. Find the girl and write her story. If she doesn't want her picture in the paper, she can be anonymous, but get hold of her."

Since the arrests of Samra's father and older brother, letters to the editor had been pouring in. People were sick to death of hearing about cultural differences and "honor," and anger was building such that the vast majority felt the sentencing guidelines ought to be made even stricter, a policy the minister of justice had just come out in favor of. A large percentage of the letters basically said that in cases involving crimes based on religious beliefs, cultural traditions, or issues involving honor, the judge should order deportation once the sentence was completed.

In Holbaek, anger and frustration at the two killings was so palpable that one night the living-room window and a large, frosted pane in the front door were smashed at Dysseparken 16B, where Sada al-Abd was now living alone with her two youngest children.

"Find her," the editor repeated. "Or find someone else with the same story. There are enough of them out there that it shouldn't be that hard."

"Nah, I guess it won't be that hard," Camilla agreed, her eyes trained on him. She sensed the rage starting to build within her, but wisely held it in check and instead continued calmly: "The girl who wrote it is ethnically Danish. Her name is Pernille and she's from Praesto." Camilla took a deep breath. "But I won't be talking to her, because she took her own life ten days ago. She was born into a family of Jehovah's Witnesses and had just turned sixteen when she broke with the church."

Terkel Hoyer was on his way out the door but stopped and took a step closer to her.

"And now you just listen here," Camilla continued, and before he had a chance to say anything, she started reading another account from fifty years ago: "'If I have to bear this child, I would rather end it all.'

"That was written by a very young woman who came from a fishing family in Western Jutland, where she grew up in an evangelical family. She got pregnant at a very young age by one of the local farmers and turned to Modrehjaelpen, the National Council for Unmarried Mothers, in the hope of getting permission for an abortion. She was denied. That same day, she took her own life by walking out into the waves to avoid having to go home to her family, who wanted her dead anyway."

"What are you getting at?" Terkel asked, walking all the way over to her desk.

Camilla was geared up for yet another confrontation and was prepared for Terkel to reject the angle she'd found for the current case.

"As a small parenthetical comment on the debate," Camilla said, "I want to draw people's attention to the fact that Danish families also expel relatives if they cast shame over the family. Of course, we don't kill them. They handle that on their own. But we shouldn't go around pretending that this could never happen in a Danish family," she said, noticing her voice getting a little louder.

Terkel sat down on the edge of her desk.

"Those aren't ordinary Danish families," he objected.

"I definitely think you could meet Jehovah's Witnesses who would be downright insulted to hear you say that," Camilla said. "Sure, they're part of a religious community, but otherwise they're completely ordinary, even if the rest of us might think they have bats in their belfries."

He smiled at her.

"They don't kill their daughters!" Terkel exclaimed.

"No, but that's the only difference. If Samra's family members were expelled by the rest of their Jordanian relatives, they would be treated the same way as Jehovah's Witnesses who were expelled by their community. The difference is that Samra's father had the option of restoring his honor by taking his daughter's life."

"We can't make that comparison. You're talking about just a tiny group of religious fanatics."

"Well, it's not that small," Camilla retorted. "The current population of Denmark is 5.4 million. That's about the same as the number of Jehovah's Witnesses in the world, so they're not exactly an insignificant group."

Her boss seemed to consider this.

"Motorcycle gangs," she said. "That's not news. If you get on bad terms with them, they'll f.u.c.king kill you. Their concept of honor is perhaps more developed than everyone else's, and that has certainly happened in Denmark. During the years when the Great Nordic Biker War was going on, we hardly read about anything else."

Hoyer gave up on saying anything and just looked at her.

"This is about the fact that there are also Danes who feel that their honor has been violated and would expel someone as a result. I think that would be extremely interesting right now, with the debate at its peak, and everyone being so busy distancing themselves from what's going on with Samra's family," Camilla blurted out. It was very irritating that they even had to discuss this, even though it didn't surprise her.

"A very small percentage," he repeated.

Camilla tucked her hair behind her ears, looked at him seriously, and said, "It is also a very small percentage of Muslims who would commit an honor killing. Quit making it sound like you believe it's the whole lot of them who would do that kind of thing. The families who react that way usually come from rural areas and they act the way we did fifty to a hundred years ago, and I can d.a.m.n well remember hearing my grandmother, who came from tiny Hvide Sande, telling some terrible stories about the girls-and boys, for that matter-who had s.e.x out of wedlock. It just irritates me that now we've totally forgotten how it actually used to be here too."

Terkel was about to say something, but Camilla cut him off.

"I'm still not saying that we accept it. Not that we accept what happened fifty years ago in that West Jutland fishing family either. It's just good common sense to look at the similarities."

She was totally winded, but could tell by looking at him that he had heard her. It would be complete lunacy not to slap this in as an aside before Holbaek descended into a character a.s.sa.s.sination of all Muslims.

"Did you also know that the Jehovah's Witnesses' Danish headquarters are in Holbaek?" she asked. "The Watchtower's office is out by Stenhus, the old boarding school. Not that they have any connection with this case, but since the folks who live out there now are all working themselves into a frenzy about Samra's family and the other immigrants in town, it's a great local hook for this story."

"I wasn't aware that you had suddenly become so engaged in this specific topic," her boss said.

"I don't even know if I have," Camilla replied after having contemplated it for a moment. "But I'm curious to find out what's going on since it occurred to someone to kill a person they love to maintain the family's honor outwardly."

"Well, get to it," Terkel said, wanting to know when he could expect her article.

"You can have it this afternoon. There's just one part I need to read up on," she said, thinking she wanted to contact the National Council for Unmarried Mothers to see what they had to say about these types of stories.

Camilla had her hand on the phone, about to dial. She was lost in her thoughts about girls who had either knowingly or inadvertently offended their families and what had happened to them as a result. She and Louise had gone to high school with a girl who came from a well-respected Roskilde family. She was seventeen when she got pregnant. The family had shut down anything having to do with her. The baby was given up for adoption and the girl sent to France to be an au pair for one of her father's business a.s.sociates. At the time, Camilla had found the whole thing exotic and exciting, but she was sure the girl probably hadn't seen it that way. Rumor had it that she had married a rich car dealer in Provence, and that she had shocked people by not attending her own mother's funeral a couple of years ago.

Camilla was torn from her recollections when the phone rang.

"He's dead."

At first she didn't recognize the voice, but then she felt her stomach tense up and her heart begin to pound faster.

"What happened?" she whispered, clenching the phone.

"He managed to hang himself in his cell," her ex-boyfriend Henning said, obviously referring to his brother.

It felt like a tower of blocks had collapsed in her chest. A loud, piercing voice inside her said she ought to hang up, that this didn't concern her. She had struggled very hard to deal with the breakup and had only now finally started to accept that he no longer wanted to be with her. So he couldn't just simply call her up with a quick comment and drag her back into his life again.

"I'd really like you to come to the funeral," Henning said.

"Why?" she blurted out, even though her piercing internal voice was screaming for her to say no.

"He left a farewell note. He asks that you partic.i.p.ate in his final journey."

How pathetic, Camilla managed to think before the voice on the other end of the phone line continued: "And I think you owe it to him to come."

Camilla felt the tears and then her throat tightening. "Do you want me there too?" she asked quietly.

"It's not about me, and it doesn't have anything to do with us," Henning responded tersely. "He's going to be buried in Soro on Sat.u.r.day at two o'clock."

Then he hung up.

34.

AHMAD AL-ABD WAS THIN AND IMMACULATELY GROOMED, with his dark hair combed neatly back. He was sitting in the living room with his wife and their three young children when Louise and Mik arrived at the apartment in Benlose, and he agreed right away to accompany them back to Holbaek. Apparently he didn't have anything against talking to the police, nor did he seem to be upset about the arrests anymore. Although once they were seated in the cruiser, he did say, "It's a great tragedy for us all that they're in jail."

Louise didn't ask him what he meant by that, preferring to wait until they were sitting across from each other and could see each other properly, so she just nodded and looked out the windshield as they drove through the countryside back to Holbaek.

"How well did you know your brother's daughter?" Mik asked once they were seated in the office with black coffee in the station's standard-issue white plastic cups.

Louise had asked Mik to take charge of the questioning while she wrote up the witness statement on the computer. There had been something in Ahmad's manner, even when they were standing in his doorway in Benlose, that told her he respected Mik more than he did her, and they couldn't afford not to use that to their advantage.

"I knew her very well," he replied. "Our family is quite close."

"Tell me about Samra as you knew her," Mik said.

Already in the car, Mik had made it clear to Ibrahim's brother that the police expected him to cooperate even though arrests had already been made in the case.

"Of course," the man had said and added that it was his duty to help the police and that he was very sad about what had happened.

"Samra was a delightful child, a happy, easy little girl," he began.

"How did things go as she got older, entered p.u.b.erty, and became a teenager?" Mik wanted to know.

Ahmad drew out his response a little, looking down at his hands, as if he were considering how to weight his words.

"That, of course, is a difficult age," he finally said. He rubbed his hands together.

Ahmad was thirty-six, seven years younger than Ibrahim, Louise figured out, doing the calculation as she sat watching him.

"In what way was it difficult?" Mik asked, to get Ahmad to continue.

"Yes, well, she did as she pleased. There were friends and boys, who suddenly became more important than her family."

Louise quickly glanced over at Mik and their eyes met. The uncle should not be interrupted now. This was an account of Samra's life they hadn't heard before.

It was as though Ahmad had picked up on their sudden uptick in interest. He paused for a moment and then started to explain that of course it was fine for young women to live their own lives, but his niece was only fifteen, so it was expected that she would respect the rules her father set for her.

"Could you expand on that?" Mik asked.

Ahmad hesitated a little before he continued. "There are some guidelines for how young girls should behave," he began. "They mustn't run around with boys and they must obey their fathers."

Mik interrupted, even though it would have been best to let the uncle go on. "What do you mean when you say that she ran around with boys?"

"Just that young girls should behave in such a way that the family can continue to be familiar with them," Ahmad explained.

"And Samra didn't do that?" Louise asked.

Samra's uncle looked irritated that Louise was getting involved in the conversation, then he shrugged and fell silent.

Mik took over again.

"It sounds to me like you're saying that Samra was a little more interested in boys than was acceptable. Whom did she see?"

Ahmad al-Abd didn't even look up when Mik asked the question, so Louise didn't expect him to answer.

But Mik kept staring at him expectantly, so a long, awkward silence filled the office.

"Did she have a boyfriend?" Mik finally asked directly.

Ahmad raised his shoulders a bit and kept his eyes focused on the desk. After another pause, he nodded a couple of times.

"Was this a relationship other people knew about?"

Again it took a while before Ahmad answered, and it was an answer that was hard to interpret, because he shrugged his shoulders while at the same time shaking his head and mumbling a weak "Perhaps."