Call Me Princess (21 page)

“I don’t want
her
back in here,” Susanne said.

Louise walked over and pushed the call button on the table next to the bed, and a second later a nurse came through the door. While it was ajar, before it had a chance to swing shut behind the nurse, Louise saw Susanne’s mother stand up, about to follow the nurse in. Louise held up her hand, as if she were a traffic cop motioning for a vehicle to stop, and to her surprise Susanne’s mother sat back down.

“I would like to bring the patient over to National Hospital to speak to the crisis psychologist she spoke to last week after the rape. Is there any way we can make that happen?”

The nurse looked at Louise in surprise and said there was no reason they couldn’t do that.

Louise smiled and thanked her, relieved that it hadn’t turned out to be a problem that a psych consult had already been ordered here at Hvidovre.

“You’ll have to take her records with you,” the nurse said. “Susanne was examined last night when she arrived, but we haven’t had a chance to do anything else yet.”

“Otherwise, the patient would like to rest until we’re ready to go,” Louise said. “That means she doesn’t want any visitors.”

The nurse smiled and said, “I’ll just go let her family know that.”

Louise wondered if she ought to take the time to call Heilmann and Jakobsen before she and Susanne left, but decided she could just do that from the car. If Jakobsen didn’t have time, they would have to wait at police headquarters until he had a slot he could fit her into.

“Do you have any clothes here?” Louise asked, afraid she was going to have to whisk Susanne away a second time wearing just a hospital gown, but Susanne nodded, pointing over toward the closet. Louise walked over there and saw her clothes hanging neatly on two hangers. She brought them over and laid them on the bed.

“I’ll wait outside while you get dressed.”

“I’d rather you stay.” Susanne’s pleading tone worried Louise. At the moment, Susanne’s voice wasn’t loud enough to reveal her feelings, but Louise guessed that under those words lurked a panicked anxiety about being left alone, lest her mother come back in. Louise walked over to look out the window. Susanne swung her legs over the side of the bed and was getting dressed when the nurse came in and set a copy of her case notes on the bedside table before continuing across the room to Louise.

“We were planning on discharging Susanne after she spoke to the psychologist, but, as the doctor noted, we planned to schedule a series of counseling sessions. Those could just as easily be conducted at National Hospital if she’s already started a course of treatment there.” The nurse paused for a bit before lowering her voice and proceeding. “It’s my sense that quite a few sessions will be necessary,” she said, tipping her head slightly toward the door.

Louise nodded, thanked her, and said good-bye before taking Susanne by the arm and preparing to escort her out.

“I asked your mother to go down to the waiting room,” the nurse called after them. “You can just follow the hallway down to the right. Then I’ll go let her know you’ve left.”

—

O
N THE WAY DOWN TO THE CAR,
L
OUISE TOOK OUT HER PHONE.
S
HE
realized she had better fill Heilmann in on developments sooner rather than later. She helped Susanne into the passenger’s seat and shut the door before dialing Heilmann’s extension.

“It’s such a heartbreaking story. It’s almost unbearable,” Louise said, briefly summarizing how the attempted suicide was motivated by Susanne’s desperation to escape her mother’s need to overprotect, dominate, control, and manipulate her life and activities.

“That’s terrible—if death felt like the only way she could escape. I’ll call Jakobsen and let him know you’re on your way,” Heilmann said as Louise opened the driver’s side door and climbed in.

“Thanks,” Louise said.

“And if it turns out he isn’t free until later, then come here,” Heilmann added after a moment’s thought. “I’m just about to meet with Suhr to decide how much information we’ll release about the suspect, and about the wording of the warning we’ve prepared.”

Louise heard herself rashly blurt out that it might be a good idea to wait. “If we hold off on the warning, I might run into the perp on Friday.” She regretted it right away—mostly because it sent a shudder through Susanne, who was leaning forward, completely on edge. Louise sensed that her words had sent a tremor through the phone connection back to police headquarters as well.

“I think you’d better explain what you mean by that,” Heilmann said.

“I’d rather not go into the details right now,” Louise said.

She needed to figure out how she could present the idea so Suhr didn’t think she was deranged and transfer her to arson or something.

“There’s a social mixer event for one of the big online dating sites this Friday,” Louise explained, “and I think he might decide to attend. It’s just an idea, but you have to get Suhr to wait until we’ve discussed it as an option.”

—

“Y
EAH, YEAH, YEAH,”
L
IEUTENANT
S
UHR GRUMBLED IMPATIENTLY,
holding his hand up in the air to stop her. “Camilla Lind already explained the pros and cons. And I think she’s right. We ought to give it a try.”

Louise hid her hands behind her back, pinching her index finger hard to keep herself from fuming.
Oh, that Camilla! She promised she wouldn’t say anything. That woman just couldn’t help herself.

“The question is really whether we dare keep this from the public any longer, now that we’ve got two serious cases on our hands,” Heilmann said rationally.

Louise still had not quite regained her composure yet. She had just dropped Susanne off with Jakobsen, who had been waiting for them in the doorway to his office, ready. He had put his arm around Susanne in a fatherly way and shepherded her inside. Once he’d gotten her settled on the comfortable couch, he came back out and let Louise know that he was going to keep Susanne for a while, so Louise didn’t need to wait. They agreed that he would call when Susanne was ready to go.

The whole way over to headquarters, Louise had contemplated how best to pitch Camilla’s idea without revealing that the idea had come from a reporter. She might as well have spared herself the trouble.

“Of course the trouble is that we might not recognize him,” Suhr said. “We saw only a glimpse of him on the CCTV footage, and we didn’t get much from that.”

It caught Louise by surprise that Suhr was evidently taking Camilla’s idea seriously, already envisioning apprehending the guy.

“True,” Louise agreed, “but I saw enough of him that I’m sure I would recognize his distinctive silhouette and posture if I saw him again. You need—”

Again he gestured with his hand to stop her.

“We’ll bring the girl,” Suhr said.

His statement hung in the air until Heilmann and Louise grasped what he meant, and then they both yelled in unison, “Absolutely not!”

Louise shook her head and added indignantly, “She just tried to commit suicide, Lieutenant.”

“Not because of him, if I understand correctly,” Suhr retorted.

Louise stared at him for a moment. He was usually such a considerate person to work with. His tone was far from the gruff style Willumsen had made part of his image. And yet, every once in a while Suhr would make seemingly callous and unfeeling decisions. At the same time, Louise could appreciate why he had made this suggestion.

“We’ll just need to see what Jakobsen says about that,” Heilmann cautioned.

“Maybe we should just skip that and stick to the original plan for the investigation,” Louise suggested.

“No, I think we damn well ought to give this a try,” Suhr argued. “There’ll be an ungodly uproar when we go public with the warning, especially since our description of the suspect is so vague. No, we’ll do this social event on Friday. If we don’t get anything out of it, then we’ll go to the public.

“Sergeant, you update Jakobsen on this and see what he has to say,” Suhr continued. “We’ll have another meeting once you’ve planned out our approach. Take Toft and Stig with you. They could stand to get out a little.”

“Wasn’t the idea for Lars to go too?” Louise asked. “I mean, at least he’s seen the footage.”

Suhr nodded absentmindedly. He had already mentally moved on to the next thing on his to-do list. Just as Suhr was leaving, Louise asked how things were going on the investigation of the immigrant woman’s murder.

Suhr turned around and glared at her, his lips pursed, but then the muscles in his face relaxed, and he shrugged slightly.

“We haven’t gotten anywhere. Unfortunately, the guy lucked out and got assigned Jens Bro as his public defender for his prelim.”

She felt for Suhr and Willumsen. It made all their cases absurdly more difficult when they got stuck with aggressive defense attorneys. She had encountered Bro herself one time when he was representing one of the biggest drug dealers in Danish history, but Bro’s efforts to find evidence exonerating his client had indirectly saved Camilla’s life. Louise didn’t have anything bad to say about him—but it was a fact that you needed to be on top of things and have truly rock-solid evidence when facing him in court.

“What happened to the woman’s children?”

“Her sister is taking care of them, which the husband is furious about. He’ll tell anyone who can be bothered to listen that he’s going to be sending the children out of the country soon. He claims the only reason is to ensure their safety and help them regain the peace and balance their mother destroyed when she moved out.”

Louise was on her feet. Heilmann had already returned to her office.

“Well, who did it, then, if it wasn’t him? Do you have any other suspects?”

“It was him,” Suhr said and was about to say more, but stopped himself and instead said they’d gotten statements from everyone in the murdered woman’s family and circle of friends.

“We are also quite aware that it may have been some kind of honor killing,” he said. “Not because she refused to marry someone her family had picked, but because she had brought shame to
his
family by
leaving
the marriage. Her own father might also have a motive if he didn’t accept his daughter’s divorce, because it went against the choice he made for her,” Suhr said, shrugging and making a face. Then he concluded, “If we hadn’t relied so much on the witness statements, erroneously believing the murder happened around one o’clock, we would have had him. He probably did pick up the kids earlier that morning as he claimed, but we think he went back sometime between eleven and twelve. Or maybe in the afternoon, just before he said he found her. We don’t have any witnesses who saw him come or go, and no one saw anyone else enter or leave the woman’s apartment.”

Suhr grumbled and added that the man ought to send a nice bottle of wine to his ex-wife’s media-happy upstairs neighbor, whose story had gotten him out of jail. Then he thumped his hand against the doorframe to show his annoyance and walked back out to the front office, where his secretary sat.

Louise went back to her office. Her head was buzzing. Her irritation at Camilla for getting involved had abated, but she decided not to tell her that the police would be at the mixer on Friday. And especially not that they might be bringing Susanne.

L
OUISE KNEW THE SECOND SHE LET HERSELF INTO THE APARTMENT
that Peter was home, because she could hear soft music coming from the living room. It surprised her. It was only six o’clock, and he usually didn’t come home until eight at the earliest.

“Hello,” she called from the entry, pleased that they could finally spend a whole evening together. They could either go out to eat, or get takeout and have a picnic in Frederiksberg Park, she thought. The weather had been surprisingly nice for May: the current temperature was over seventy, and it looked like that would continue.

She smiled and went in to give him a kiss, but she stopped in the doorway, shocked to see three empty beer bottles on the coffee table as well as a fourth that Peter was close to finishing. He looked like someone had punched him squarely in the chest, forcing him back into the soft cushions on the couch. His eyes were red and puffy and avoiding her.

“What happened?” she asked, frightened, walking over to sit down in the armchair next to the couch. There was something about the way he looked that kept her from sitting down on the couch next to him, a wall of despair that made him seem sealed off in his own private world.

He still hadn’t looked at her; he just sat, staring down at the top of the coffee table, frozen and distant. Finally he pulled himself together and looked at her. He had a hard time getting the words out.

“I came home to tell you I’ve fallen in love with someone else and I’m moving out today.”

She held her breath as his words hung in the air. They buzzed around the room but couldn’t penetrate her consciousness.

Peter looked down at his hands, which were clutching his beer bottle.

Louise stared at him, expecting him to continue, but he had disappeared back into his vacuum, and they sat there in silence. She would have thought her head would be bursting with questions and thoughts in a situation like this. But there was just silence. Emptiness.

“Who is she?” she asked, finally.

Her insides were frozen solid. She both did and did not want to know who had forced her way into his heart and driven Louise out. An icy awareness of her own body and soul spread through her, warning her that the worst might be coming now. She pictured herself and Peter. They’d always had a special vibe, such great chemistry between them, and she had let them both down by pulling away and prioritizing herself and her own life. Louise could see now that she had pushed Peter into someone else’s arms.

He sighed deeply before responding, not even trying to pull himself together. She would just have to deal. He didn’t even try to pretend that he was the master of the situation, as though he was merely passing on some necessary information. The sorrow and pain radiated from him.