Call Me Princess (25 page)

“Did they know each other already?” Louise asked Annette, every single nerve in her body twitching to hear the answer.

“They’ve been e-mailing each other for a while... I’ve chatted with him too, but he and I never exchanged e-mails.”

“How long ago did they leave?” Louise demanded.

Annette thought for a long time before she estimated that it had probably been a good hour. That fit with when Louise had seen him.

“He was really drunk, you know?” Annette said.

That was not a particularly reassuring piece of information.

“We have to contact your friend,” Louise said urgently. “I presume she has a cell phone,” Louise said, more as a statement than as a question, and Annette nodded.

“I’ll be right back,” Louise said. She got out of the car, knocked on Heilmann’s window, and asked her to get out, too. Once Heilmann closed her door again and Susanne couldn’t hear them, Louise explained that their suspect was very likely with a young woman right now, a woman he had been e-mailing for a while.

They stepped away from the cars and discussed how risky it would be to call her cell phone themselves. That might drive “Duke” or Jesper Bjergholdt, or whatever alias he was going by now, into wounded-prey mode. He might go into a rage or feel forced to attack—or maybe he would run away and try to hide.

“Her name is Stine Mogensen,” Louise said. “She’s twenty-five, and she left the party with our guy about an hour ago. He must have slipped out in the crowd before I managed to get outside.”

Heilmann listened without showing any reaction.

“We have to assume that they went to her apartment,” Louise continued, feeling the tension mounting in her gut. “If that was over an hour ago, something really bad may have already happened.”

“Tell the girlfriend to call Stine on her cell phone and get her out of there,” Heilmann said. “She could say she needs to see her right away. Or something like that.”

“But then we’ll lose him,” Louise objected.

Heilmann hesitated for a brief instant before continuing, in an authoritative voice, “The most important thing is for us to make sure the girl is safe. I’ll send the others out to her address.”

Heilmann went to call her male colleagues over.

As Louise walked back toward the car, she caught sight of Camilla out of the corner of her eye, strolling out arm in arm with a man. Even from a distance, Louise could tell he was attractive, but instead of going over and saying hi, she hurriedly got back into the car so Camilla wouldn’t see her.

“Where does your friend live?” Louise asked.

Annette was pale. “On Sverrigsgade in Amager,” she mumbled.

Louise wrote down the address and apartment number and got out of the car again to find Heilmann.

Camilla and Henning had disappeared, and Michael Stig was already waiting in the car.

“You drive over there, siren and flashers off,” Heilmann cautioned. “And make sure you have backup in place at the back door before you go in.”

“Shouldn’t I go too?” Louise offered.

Heilmann shook her head. “You’re going to stay here with me while the girl calls her friend on her cell phone, and then you’re going to drive Susanne home.”

Louise made another attempt to convince Heilmann, but the sergeant stood her ground even though she knew it would irk Louise to let other officers make the arrest in a case she had worked so hard on.

Heilmann sat down in the back seat of Louise’s car and tried to strike up a conversation with Annette, who was gradually sobering up but was still deathly pale. She had apparently given up on understanding what was going on, apart from “Duke” being mixed up in something so serious that the police wanted to get ahold of him. She didn’t ask what he’d done, but, understandably enough, was growing more and more concerned about what might happen to her friend.

“Call her now,” Heilmann urged Annette.

Annette scrolled through her address book until she found Stine Mogensen’s number and then took a deep breath before dialing. She sat anxiously waiting until she heard it ring, then her shoulders relaxed, and she waited.

Louise and Heilmann were so still, it looked as though they were both holding their breath.

“It’s going to voicemail,” Annette said after a second.

“Try again,” Heilmann requested from the back seat.

Annette called again and left an urgent request for Stine to call as soon as she heard the message.

Heilmann thanked Annette for her cooperation and climbed out of the car. As the car door closed, Louise heard Heilmann, already on her phone, ordering the team to enter the apartment.

“Check for sounds or light from outside. If she doesn’t open the door, kick it in,” Heilmann ordered before she was even back in her car. A moment later, Susanne came and climbed into the back seat of Louise’s car, and they took off with Heilmann following so fast that the gravel flew.

The mood in the car was strangely flat, the way you might feel after an engrossing movie, when the audience stays in their seats to collect their thoughts before they’re ready to leave the theater. Their show was also over here, at least their part of it.

“What if Stine calls me back?” Annette asked, breaking the silence.

Louise was in the middle of contemplating whether she could just let Annette out here and then drive Susanne home or if she was obligated to drive Annette home as well. Annette’s question resolved it for her, because it suddenly hit her that there was actually a small chance that Stine Mogensen and “Duke” were someplace other than Stine’s apartment; and if that was the case, the police would still need Annette’s help.

Louise turned on the ignition and started driving toward Annette’s address in Nørrebro. Susanne hadn’t said a word since she’d gotten into the car. Not
hi
,
hello
, or anything else. She just sat there staring out the window, as though her thoughts had transported her to another world.

“I’m driving you home now,” Louise told Annette. “If Stine calls, tell her you need to talk to her.”

Louise spoke as calmly as she could to avoid upsetting Annette any more than necessary. It was better if Annette didn’t realize how important it was that they get this right. That would reduce the risk of her being so nervous she messed something up.

“My colleagues are at Stine’s apartment now. If she’s there, they’ll explain why you asked her to call, and that’ll be the end of it.” Louise drove across Christianhavn Square before continuing: “If Stine calls you back, it’ll be because she’s not at her apartment when she gets your message. If that happens, then you should just ask her to come over to your place right away. And then call me immediately.
Immediately
,” Louise emphasized.

—

A
FTER
L
OUISE DROPPED
A
NNETTE OFF AND WATCHED UNTIL SHE HAD
made it in her front door, she was itching to call Heilmann. The feeling in the pit of her stomach told her that things were about to come to a head. Still, she didn’t want Susanne to know how tense she was. She tried to curb her anxiety and flashed Susanne a smile in the rearview mirror.

“You think he’s doing it right now, don’t you?” Susanne said, instead of returning the smile.

Louise gave up on hiding what she was feeling and nodded as she started driving toward Valby. They were driving down Falkoner Allé when Heilmann called. Louise snapped the handset to her ear instantly before Susanne could hear Heilmann’s voice come over the two-way radio’s speaker.

“He wasn’t there,” Heilmann reported succinctly.

“Well, where are they then?” Louise asked, speaking so quietly she imagined she couldn’t be heard from the back seat. She glanced discreetly in the rearview mirror to see if Susanne had reacted, but she was leaning her head back against the headrest with her eyes closed.

“
She
was there,” Heilmann said, making Louise take her eyes off Susanne and put them back on the road. “Half asleep and very confused.”

Louise had a hard time pinning down the feeling that came over her. It was a combination of disappointment, relief, and frustration at being back to square one.

“They did leave the party together,” Heilmann reported. “But they said good-bye when she got on her bike and he kept going on foot.”

Louise’s fingers tensed around the steering wheel. It was her fault Bjergholdt had gotten away. She should have stopped him from leaving the party before he had a chance to slip out. Self-recrimination filled her head. How stupid she’d been to rely on her cell phone in the warehouse when she knew there was a risk they wouldn’t have any reception. She could have left Susanne standing there and hurried over to the exit instead of taking the time to bring Susanne along.

Fuck
, she thought, hitting the steering wheel, snapping Susanne out of her reverie. Louise tried to pull herself together, but her composure was crumbling. To her surprise, she longed to snuggle up against Peter, and that pissed her off even more because it forced her to admit she needed him on such a visceral level. Suddenly the emptiness started feeding on itself: she had nothing to go home to, no one to comfort her the next morning and tell her she’d done the right thing. Even though he, of all people, had no fucking idea what the right thing to do even was. It always used to help her feel better, not feel so exposed when she showed up at the morning briefing.

“We’re almost there,” she announced into the dark car.

Lyshøj Allé was just off Toftegård Square. Louise parked in the middle of the narrow street and turned around to look at Susanne.

“Do you feel safe sleeping here alone?” Louise asked, with no clue what she would do if Susanne said no.

Luckily Susanne nodded and, in an even more convincing voice, said she was looking forward to being by herself.

“If you feel unsafe for any reason whatsoever, call the number we gave you. It’s the direct line to police headquarters dispatch. They’ll send a car over right away.”

Lieutenant Suhr had arranged for dispatch to keep an eye on Susanne’s apartment until she moved to her new address after the weekend.

Susanne didn’t seem to be listening. She had gotten out of the car and was just standing there fidgeting, waiting for permission to go in. And Louise couldn’t blame her. It was four thirty in the morning and she’d just been discharged from the hospital. There was no question that she needed to go to bed and get some rest.

Louise waved at her and put the car in gear, then decided to head home instead of returning the car to the garage. She could drop it back off Saturday morning. She was sure the others were back at headquarters, rounding off the day with a debriefing, but they’d just have to make do without her.

“S
O WE’LL GO PUBLIC AND LOOK FOR OTHER YOUNG WOMEN HE’S
victimized in the past.”

Suhr’s voice rumbled through the break room during Monday’s morning briefing. Louise felt like she’d lost her grip. She’d woken up Saturday morning feeling extremely sick to her stomach, and she had thrown up numerous times over the next few hours. In the end, she swallowed her pride and called Camilla, even though she knew Henning was probably there and that she would be interrupting their Saturday plans. But Louise just couldn’t bring herself to call her mother.

She hadn’t told her parents much about the breakup. They knew there’d been a fight, but they didn’t know what to make of Peter moving out of the apartment, and Louise still didn’t feel ready to explain it.

Camilla came over Saturday afternoon and sat with Louise as she lay on the sofa, pouring out her grief and despair. Louise was astonished at how easily she cried, but stubbornly insisted she wasn’t crying about the breakup.

“Are you lonely?” Camilla asked cautiously, getting up to put in the Big Fat Snake CD she had brought over. Camilla firmly believed that their music helped
everything
.

Louise shook her head firmly and then closed her eyes, carried away by Anders Blichfeldt’s amazing voice. When she eventually opened them again, she reassured Camilla that she had actually been longing for a little solitude.

“I just feel like I’ve become so fragile inside. Like I might shatter if I get hit by a stone.” That was the best way Louise could explain how little was left of her strength, which she’d always taken for granted.

Camilla was tactful enough not to bring work up while Louise was so upset, but questions about the previous night’s singles event were looming behind her comforting words and nurturing tone. Camilla stayed until late afternoon, when she and Henning planned to drive out to his place in Sorø and spend Saturday night there. Markus was staying with his father.

The tears and the nausea had abated by the time Louise waved good-bye to Camilla from the stairs. Louise accepted that she had to live with her body’s way of working through the breakup, but she set Sunday night as her deadline for getting over it. She thankfully still had one more day to wallow in self-pity, she thought to herself, as she watched Camilla get into her car and drive away.

—

“N
OW WE’RE CLOSING IN ON HIM, AND WE WON’T BACK DOWN UNTIL
we’ve got him,” Suhr bellowed on, yanking Louise’s attention back to the morning briefing.

Her colleagues did not pile the blame on her when she showed up for the briefing as she had feared they would. When she woke up, a few minutes before the alarm went off, she inhaled all the way down to her gut and decided that, from this moment on, her life would continue as it had before—just without Peter. Sadness, loneliness, and a broken heart were feelings she could have; they just couldn’t be all. Then she got up and thought she was doing better. She managed to sound almost natural when Michael Stig—the only one who had done so—passed her in the hallway and asked her how the hell she could let Bjergholdt escape into thin air when it had been her job to keep that from happening.

“He left,” Louise said in a steady tone and walked off to the briefing.

“We’ll show the CCTV footage from the subway station if we have to, but we’ll start without it,” Suhr said.