Only One Life: A Novel Part 7

The Mollers' house had a white plaster exterior with a large balcony that went all the way around the top floor. Louise guessed that the view was impressive: the sound, the marina, open fields, forest, and the city. Parked in the driveway was a large new SUV. Louise was a little puzzled. As far as she had managed to figure out, both parents worked in Holbaek; the father had a chiropractic clinic on the main street, and the mother worked part-time as a medical secretary. Yet they had opted to equip themselves with a Jeep Grand Cherokee with yellow license plates, normally reserved for business cars that were eligible for lower fees. It irked Louise when people who didn't have a really good reason chose to drive big, heavy cars like that.

As she approached the front door, she heard fierce barking. There was a wall to the right of the house with a white gate in the middle. She had the feeling there might be a nice pack of medium-size dogs just on the other side, and she got a glimpse of the shadow of a German shepherd and an Old English sheepdog before she quickly took the three steps up to front door and rang the bell.

Ding-dong. The sound echoed and only agitated the dogs more. Now there was barking from inside the house too. Louise began to regret not asking Dicta to come down to the police station after all. Not that Louise had anything against dogs, but all the noise and frenzy was annoying as she tried to gather her thoughts and prepare her questions.

Dicta was wearing a gray tracksuit, she had no makeup on, and her long blonde hair was gathered into a loose ponytail. Her ditziness and flightiness of the other day were now entirely gone. Louise was standing opposite a young girl who was either trying to be a grown-up or striving to give an impression of maturity. Pale and deeply upset, Dicta invited Louise inside, into something Louise would have described as a laundry room-or scullery, as people still called them where she was from. A woman was busy grooming a large, black poodle there.

The woman wiped the dog hair on her hands onto an ap.r.o.n that was mostly covered by a picture of a dog jumping through a car tire. Underneath were the words STOCKHOLM 2006.

"Hi, I'm Anne Moller," she said, offering her hand to Louise. "Dicta's mother."

The latter comment was superfluous. Not only did the two of them resemble each other uncannily, but the woman also looked at Dicta with the concern on her face that only a mother could have for her child. "I came home as soon as Dicta got the call from school," she explained. "She called me at the medical practice where I work." She let the dog go and pulled her shoulder-length blonde hair behind her ears as she explained that she did compet.i.tion-level agility trial training and trained other people's dogs for them. Those were the dogs running around out in the yard right now.

That explained all the barking, and probably the SUV, Louise thought.

The poodle was interested in her and began to sniff.

"Charlie, down," Dicta's mother commanded. The dog hesitated only for a moment before going under the dining table and lying down.

Anne Moller asked Louise to follow her into the kitchen, where she pointed at the large oval Piet Hein table that filled the room.

"Do you drink coffee? I just put a pot on. My husband is on his way home. He just has to pa.s.s off his patients to the two chiropractors who work for him at the clinic."

Anne's speech seemed a bit frantic and her cheeks were flushed. During pauses, her eyes would dart over to see how her daughter was doing.

Louise had taken a seat opposite Dicta and had the sense that the girl was tuning out her mother's stream of words. Dicta sat with her eyes trained on the table and was obviously somewhere else entirely.

"Do you take milk? I'll just warm some up!"

Louise looked up at Anne and said cold milk was fine, but Dicta's mother ignored her and placed a carafe of milk in the microwave.

After clicking the door shut and punching in the heating time, she appeared to calm down. She came over and stood behind Dicta, laying her hands on her shoulders. She had taken off her ap.r.o.n and was dressed cla.s.sically in a lightweight cardigan over a white blouse and beige linen trousers. Her face looked fresh and youthful with nice, smooth skin.

"It doesn't make any sense at all. Samra was just here a couple of days ago," Anne said.

She started stroking her daughter's arms and then walked over and took out a bowl and filled it with chocolate cookies. She did the whole thing reflexively, because there was something safe and rea.s.suring about setting out cups and cookies on the table.

Louise looked intently at Dicta, saying she wanted to chat with her a little about Samra's friends and her relationship with her family.

Dicta slowly raised her eyes toward Louise, as though it were a long trip back to reality, and Louise gave her plenty of time once she finally began to speak. Mechanically, the girl took a cookie from the bowl and broke it into small pieces so the crumbs fell on the table as she rattled off the names of three other girls from school she knew Samra spent a fair amount of time with.

"I only know one of them really well," Dicta said. "She's my friend too; the other two I don't know that well."

Louise wrote down the names and signaled that the mother was welcome to come over and sit with them. She'd been hovering in the background since they started talking. Now she brought her cup over and sat down.

"I think they mostly hung out together at school," Dicta continued after regaining her composure, explaining that it was rare for Samra to get permission to take part in anything that happened after school hours.

"Her parents were really strict. She was supposed to come straight home and do her homework," Dicta said. "And she often had to help watch her little sister and brother too."

Louise detected a sweet sort of pride when Dicta explained that her friend Samra had been one of the smartest students in their cla.s.s-but then you'd darn well expect that, Louise thought, if you were forced to pore over your schoolbooks for so many hours every day.

"You're some good kids," her mother interjected, stroking her daughter's cheek.

Dicta looked at her as though she didn't understand where that comment had come from, finding it out of place.

"She was a good kid," Dicta stressed, turning her eyes back to Louise.

"You work hard too," the mother insisted.

Dicta ignored her, and Louise hurriedly stepped in.

"But her parents did give her permission to come over here?" Louise asked.

"Yes, but definitely not quite as often as Samra would have liked, as far as I understood."

Anne was the one who latched on to that question, and Louise listened in interest as Anne explained that she had met Samra's mother several times.

"At the medical practice where I work," she said. "She stops by there relatively often, either by herself or with the two children, and then we always chat about the girls and their school. She knows that Dicta is a stable, sensible girl, and that probably contributes to their feeling comfortable having their daughter at our house. But I never got the impression Samra was allowed to spend much time with anyone else after school either."

"She also got permission to sleep over here," Dicta said, adding that she hadn't gotten permission to sleep over at Liv's, another of the girls in their clique.

They heard a car engine stop and a door slam shut. Anne got up to go out and prepare her husband for the fact that there was a police officer visiting, Louise guessed.

He was a tall, handsome man, blonde with bright-blue eyes. It wasn't hard to see where Dicta had gotten her looks from with these parents, Louise thought, standing to shake his hand.

"I'm Henrik," he said once Louise had introduced herself and explained why she was there.

He gave his daughter a kiss on the cheek before going to get a cup from the cabinet and joining them.

"It's so terrible, you can hardly bear to think of it," he said.

"I can't think of anything else," Dicta said.

He looked with worry at his daughter.

"Of course you're thinking of her," he said, turning to look at Louise. "It's just so incomprehensible when it's a girl you know. It's been all the talk at the clinic the whole morning. People are afraid this will lead to something more."

"It might, too, if there's a killer on the loose in town," said Anne.

Henrik looked at his wife, and Louise could tell that he was about to say something rea.s.suring when Dicta suddenly stood up and left the kitchen.

They sat watching her go.

"The police still don't know much?" Henrik asked, looking at Louise. She shook her head.

"We've started interviewing the family and are looking for witnesses who might have seen Samra during the period of time we think she went missing. But it's a gap that extends over twelve hours. From when she said good night to her mother in her room at eight-thirty until she was found the next morning."

Neither of the parents asked Louise whether the police thought the family was behind it. And she was happy about that. She looked over toward Dicta's room to a.s.sess whether enough time had pa.s.sed for her to go in to talk to her more.

"She was a good kid," Dicta's father said, using the same wording that his wife had used earlier. "Even if her family had a different set of rules for her than the ones her friends lived under, it seemed like she accepted them. There was no anger in her voice and she talked openly about the things that were off-limits to her. I actually had quite a lot of respect for that. We also hear about girls at school who are very disruptive to cla.s.s unity because they let all their pent-up frustrations spill over onto their cla.s.smates."

Charlie had come in and was now resting his soft, furry head in Louise's lap. She scratched behind his ear.

"Many of these young immigrants are also put into an unreasonable situation-especially those who come here after spending their childhoods in another country," Anne added, backing up her husband. "They get pressured to step into a life they are never given full access to. That has got to be frustrating. Especially for young people who aren't that aware yet about the differences between Muslim and Danish ways of life."

Louise listened without interrupting. She liked Dicta's parents, and it wasn't hard to see why Dicta's friends liked to spend time at her house. They were very down-to-earth and forthcoming.

"Nor is it easy to come to this country," the father continued. "It's not like we're trying to meet them halfway. That much is clear here, even though Holbaek is a relatively small town. Lots of immigrants have moved here, and it's obvious when you visit our schools or walk around in town."

"But he doesn't mean that just in a bad way," Dicta's mother hastened to inject.

"No, of course not," her husband said quickly, "but the tension has been growing more visible in recent years."

He stood up and walked out to find his jacket and pull a pack of cigarettes from the pocket.

"Do you mind?" he asked before he tapped one out.

Louise shook her head, hoping in a moment of weakness that he would offer her one. But he didn't, probably a.s.suming he was the only one with a nicotine addiction.

"The children of immigrants are placed in public schools, which causes many Danish families to choose private schools for their children-which is pretty much a ridiculous system," he said, "particularly at the secondary level, from seventh grade up. They may be good at reading and writing, but they have no idea who the prime minister is because they never watch Danish TV or read Danish papers, and it doesn't help that there aren't any Danish students in cla.s.s to pick these things up from. It leaves our public-school cla.s.srooms full of only disadvantaged students with limited resources. And that's not good for anyone."

"I a.s.sume that's why you're sending Dicta to Hojmark School, which is public, right?" Louise asked.

They both nodded.

"Some Danish kids have to stay in the public-school system if we don't want the country to crack down the middle," Anne said, her voice sounding tired, as though she had had to explain her position one too many times. Louise thought of Camilla, who was of the opposite opinion when it came to her son, Markus. He was attending a private school because Camilla felt he had only a limited number of years to attend school and so his experience had to be as close to perfect as possible-and she definitely didn't want him held back by students without family resources who slowed the pace down for everyone. For a moment Louise was happy she didn't have kids herself, because she found herself torn between the two points of view.

She stood up and said she just wanted to go see if Dicta was ready to continue. The poodle's eyes followed her, as though he were trying to figure out whether she was going to come back or whether he might as well go take a nap.

She knocked quietly on the door and waited for Dicta to say come in. The room was large and bright with its own French doors opening out onto the yard. Several posters were hanging on the walls, but, considering the girl's aspirations of becoming a model, Louise was surprised there were no pictures of herself. When Louise asked about that, Dicta pulled a photo alb.u.m off a shelf and flipped through the last few pages in it. Then she went to the closet and got out a box that was crammed so full, its lid would no longer stay in place without a rubber band.

"My parents don't know much about this," she explained as she opened the box and carefully spread the pictures out on the bed.

"Surely they can't help but notice when the pictures are printed in the paper," Louise said. Dicta laid out the last picture.

"They do know a little bit about it. Just not that I'm working on becoming a professional model, and that we've taken so many pictures."

Louise looked at Dicta and thought she had a curiously grownup way of relating to this modeling career that she hadn't even really embarked on yet. They must be the photographer's words she was using.

"Who took the pictures?" Louise asked, contemplating one where Dicta was sitting on the deck of a sailboat with her long blonde hair fluttering in the breeze and her feet hanging over the edge. She turned the photo over to see if there was a copyright notice on the back, but there was nothing.

"His name's Michael Mogensen, and he's the best in town," Dicta said, sitting up straight. "We've spent a lot of time taking the pictures that are going into my portfolio. Now I'm just waiting for him to finish them. There's something about the background he needs to correct in Photoshop; but once that's all set, the portfolio will be ready to be submitted to the major modeling agencies."

Louise smiled at her. Dicta had a youthful joy and exuberance when she talked about her dreams, and at the moment it was just sweet-but it didn't take a professional's eyes to see that there was something naive and rigid in Dicta's poses, which a more talented photographer would probably have done something about.

"It sounds exciting," Louise said.

She fished out a picture in which Dicta was standing between Samra and a man who was in his mid-twenties.

"That's Michael," explained Dicta. "He is a staff photographer at Venstrebladet." She sounded a little impressed that he had taken on the responsibility for shepherding her to the top.

Louise looked at the picture for a long time. Samra had a big smile on her face and her hair hung loose. It had been taken on a summer day down by the water. Louise recognized the bridge out to Holbaek's public beach, and she thought she could just make out the red-painted main building and little changing cabins in the background.

"He looks nice," Louise said, examining the very average-looking guy with blonde hair and thick eyebrows.

"Did Samra have her photos taken too?" Louise continued, asking out of curiosity.

Dicta shook her head. "She just came with me a couple of times. Her father would totally flip out if he knew."

Dicta stacked up the pictures and put them back into the box before carefully hiding it away again and making sure it was hidden by other boxes and a bag in the bottom of her closet.

"Was she seeing any boys?" Louise asked once Dicta emerged again.

It took a while before she answered.

"What do you mean by seeing?"

Louise was angling again to find out whether Samra had a boyfriend, or whether there was a boy she had had an especially big crush on.

"She wasn't allowed to do that stuff," Dicta continued.

"Not being allowed to do something is not necessarily the same as not doing it," Louise tried to say in a way that would not force Dicta to snitch on her friend for breaking her family's rules. Dicta herself obviously felt other people didn't necessarily need to know everything about Samra's life.

Louise asked how Dicta perceived Samra's relationship with her family.

Dicta shrugged, and when no answer was forthcoming, Louise stepped over and opened the door to leave.

"Over time, she preferred spending time here more than being at home," Dicta said finally as Louise stood in the hallway, "but that may also have been because there was always so much noise and so many people at her place," she continued, following Louise.

Louise went back out to the kitchen and said good-bye to Dicta's parents, who were still sitting at the table talking softly, but they got up and came outside with her.

"Did Samra mention anything about her family recently? Did she give the impression that anything wasn't as it should be?"

Louise glanced at the parents to see if they understood where she was headed with this line of thought.

Dicta's shoulders sank a little, and, without warning, all the tears she had been holding back suddenly flooded out. Her slender body began to shake as though convulsing from some intense cramp, and then the sobs emerged. Charlie got up uneasily from his place under the table and watched Dicta. The tremors increased, and Dicta's father took his daughter in his arms and rocked her gently back and forth.

"Had you noticed anything about Samra that might indicate she was afraid of something the last few times you saw her?" Louise repeated, persisting with her question despite the sobbing because the question might well have been what triggered it.

Dicta didn't answer, and her father closed his arms tighter around her. Louise nodded at him and said good-bye to Dicta as she let the mother accompany her the rest of the way out.

They stood on the front steps as Anne said she thought she had noticed a change in Samra recently. She said Samra had seemed sullen and sad.

"She used to enjoy helping me out a little with the dogs, also when I was training them in our dog run out in the back yard. But lately she's been staying up in the bedroom with Dicta. Maybe they just had a lot of homework to do, or a lot of things to talk about."

Louise nodded. It was impossible to know, if Dicta didn't want to say what was going on. Louise thanked Anne for the coffee and asked her to tell her daughter that she could call or stop by the police station at any time if anything else came up.

She was just stepping off the end of the driveway onto the sidewalk when a blue station wagon drove up and parked at the curb, and she immediately recognized the photographer as he got out of the car and started walking up toward the front door.