Call Me Princess (29 page)

“What phone are you calling from?” Louise asked.

Susanne’s phone number usually showed up on her caller ID, so if the call had come from that number, it should have shown on the display.

“It’s a phone
Morgenavisen
gave me so I wouldn’t have to use mine.”

Now Louise saw what was going on. The newspaper was staking its claim. Camilla was on the story, and she was making sure no one else could get ahold of Susanne.
Smart thinking, Camilla! Go in and ask for a raise
, she thought. At the same time, it told her that the paper obviously thought there could be more victims. That the story was big enough that it would headline all summer. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to make sure they had the exclusive rights to Susanne’s story. She pictured Camilla and imagined her weekend in the countryside with her son and boyfriend. Here’s hoping her fairy tale wouldn’t be interrupted by a new rape, Louise thought bitterly.

“Well, I’ll talk to you soon,” Louise said when she couldn’t think of anything else. When you got right down to it, Susanne wasn’t really doing anything wrong. She was just doing what most people would, and at least her mother wasn’t anywhere in the picture. Not that Louise could see, anyway.

When Louise updated Suhr on this development, he decided he wanted to talk to Camilla himself and find out what her plans were for Susanne. He didn’t want to see the case turn into some kind of media circus, as he put it, but if the paper could guarantee that her address would remain secret and they filtered the e-mail she received he didn’t have any objections. Louise guessed that Camilla would humor him and agree to notify him right away if any interesting messages came in. Louise saw that Camilla had found a way to make sure she stayed one step ahead of the police. Now suddenly she was the one who would notify
them,
not the other way around.

When Louise looked at her watch, she realized she only had an hour to get home, shower, and change before she was supposed to meet Flemming. She quickly shut off her computer and raced out the door.

—

J
UST A TAD LATE,
L
OUISE STOOD, SLIGHTLY WINDED, PEERING AT THE
densely populated bar counter, but there was no sign of Flemming Larsen. She walked over to an open table in the corner near the kitchen and had just sat down when he walked in the door.

“Have you been waiting long?” he asked apologetically.

She reassured him she had just gotten there herself. They moved into the restaurant section of the café, where he had made a reservation.

Louise felt awkward. She was wearing more makeup than she usually did for work. She was wearing a turquoise tunic from Pureheart—borrowed from Camilla—over her jeans, and for once she was letting her long, unruly curls fall freely. Fleming, on the other hand, looked like he had come straight from work.

“I got called out just as I was getting ready to come,” he said, sensing she was feeling a little overdressed.

She had a sinking feeling in her stomach, involuntarily imagining that a new rape had been reported after she left the office.

He shook his head.

“A stabbing,” he said. “I met Willumsen at the scene.”

Louise shook her head in confusion, saying, “I thought Willumsen was away for a long weekend with his wife.”

“He was, but he arrived right after me, so he must have ditched his wife at the hotel the instant Suhr called,” Flemming said, smiling. “He feels sure this was a revenge killing. It was the same man who was released the other day for the murder of his ex-wife in Nykøbing Sjaelland we were speaking about at lunch. He was stabbed in the chest and the back. It looks like more than one attacker. Willumsen’s guess is that the guy was bragging a little too loudly about the charges being dropped, which must have provoked the woman’s family.”

Louise listened without feeling anything. One murder case took over for another. The man had been going to go free, even though he had murdered his ex-wife. Now he was dead. Louise thought about the children, who had been sent abroad and no longer had a father or a mother to come home to.

She let Flemming order for them, watching him as he studied the wine list. She suddenly realized how much she longed for companionship, now that she was out and surrounded by people having a good time. She hadn’t felt that in ages.

She finally gave in at four in the morning and let Flemming help her into a cab. She had had way too much to drink and smoked way too many cigarettes. Even in her fog, she was a little ashamed that she had gotten so carried away and out of control, but it had been a fun night.

W
HEN
L
OUISE WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING, HER HEAD WAS
throbbing so violently that she lay there for a long time, pulling herself together before she slowly pushed herself over the edge of the bed into a sitting position. They had mostly drunk gin after dinner, and the taste was still in her mouth. She got up and brushed her teeth and scurried back into bed, while she waited for someone to pour her back into the bottle, as her father used to say when she was younger.

It had been a good evening, and even in the midst of her hangover she felt alive, as though something had been liberated inside her. She looked at the clock. She had an hour until she was supposed to meet Peter. Maybe she should cancel. Or maybe she ought to march right down to that café stinking of liquor and cigarette smoke and not give a damn.

—

“A
RE YOU SURE YOU’RE OKAY?”
P
ETER ASKED UNCERTAINLY AFTER
they’d finished their second cup of coffee and had squared away all the practical matters about dividing up their possessions.

She nodded in affirmation and asked “How about you?” She had avoided asking before.

“Yeah, things are great,” he said quickly.

That’s a fucking lie
, she could see that. Suddenly she noticed how he looked. He seemed sad, but was trying to hide it.

“I mean, obviously it’s a bit of an adjustment,” he added, watching her with an intent look that she didn’t have the energy to interpret. “It’s different.”

She could imagine.

He looked at his watch and started getting ready to go. “We’re going out to Lina’s sister’s place this afternoon. She’s pregnant, and there’s obviously a lot of baby stuff to talk about even though the little guy’s not coming for another seven months.”

Louise felt bad for Peter. He tended to use that sarcastic tone when he was starting to lose respect and to tune out.

The thought didn’t hit her until she was back home, lying on the sofa. What would she do if he suddenly showed up at the door and wanted to move back in?

She closed her eyes, determined to push the thought out of her mind before she had a chance to start dwelling on it.

—

W
HEN SHE WOKE UP LATER IN THE AFTERNOON, SHE MADE HERSELF
a big mug of tea, with of plenty of sugar and milk, and then sat down in front of her computer. There were lots of new pictures from a wild Friday night on the town. She discovered to her amazement that there was a whole album from one of the places she and Flemming had been. She hadn’t even noticed the photographer there, nor did she recognize any of the people in the pictures. She was forced to conclude she had actually been engrossed in the coroner’s company.

She sat there idly, clicking through Copenhagen’s night life, and had gone three or four pictures past it before her tired brain registered what her eyes had seen.

He was with three girls, showing off for the photographer. He was standing on the far left, talking to someone who wasn’t in the picture. His aristocratic profile stood in sharp contrast to pretty much everything else in the picture.

She clicked on the picture and zoomed in so it took up the whole screen. She scrolled down over the photo and noticed the text box underneath. Not that she expected his name to be there, more because she was just on autopilot.

Prinzz.

They were calling him “Prinzz” now. She sat for a long time, staring, without being able to remember the three girls’ names. She saw only his name with those two
Z
s and wondered if it could belong to someone else. But there wasn’t anyone else in the picture. Just the four of them.

She shivered a little as she went back to the start page and typed “Prinzz” in the site’s search box. She couldn’t tell if it was her hangover still wreaking havoc on her body, or if it was agitation knowing he had been hanging out in the same part of town where she had been. She could have run into him. They actually could have been in the same place without her having realized it. She hit
ENTER
and found his profile. The album under his profile name was empty, but the profile did have a “Send Prinzz a Message” link. Louise sat there staring for a long time, and then her fingers starting moving on the keyboard.

“I saw you downtown last night, but you weren’t alone so I didn’t want to bother you. Is there a place you usually go?”

Louise tried to imagine what Susanne would have written if it were her. Brief and not too self-confident at any rate. She signed it “TRIM” and pressed
SEND,
but regretted it right away. She should have thought it through in a state when her mental capacity was not diminished by a hangover. She wanted to arouse his curiosity, not set off his warning bells.

Shit
, she thought, cursing that she couldn’t get the message back.

She was still sitting there, trying to collect her thoughts, a moment later when an icon blinked to tell her she had a message in her Nightwatch inbox.

“Sometimes,” he wrote succinctly.

Dumbfounded, she sat there staring. She had established contact, but it had almost been too easy. Again she suspected that she had the wrong guy. Maybe this wasn’t even the guy who called himself “Prinzz.” She was still so tired. Although her headache had abated, she was still thinking slowly, and she wasn’t with it enough to come up with a plausible excuse to back out now and wait to reestablish contact once she was feeling better.

Another message from him: “Have I seen you?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she replied, starting to sweat. “You were surrounded by girls, so I totally don’t blame you for not noticing me.”

It would be dumb to break off contact, she now realized, since he was writing to her. If it turned out it really was him, she had to hold on, tooth and nail. She led the conversation to a neutral topic.

“Do you go out often?” she wrote.

“It depends. What about you?”

“No, not so much. I was just out with an old friend from school.”

“Old? How old are you?”

She stopped to consider. Both Susanne and Christina Lerche were in their early thirties. It would be too much of a leap if she was much older.

“Thirty-three,” she lied, adding that she hoped that wasn’t off-putting.

“Not at all. Do you have kids?”

Yes or no, she wondered quickly. No, no kids to tuck into bed before dinner, she concluded.

“No, I haven’t found the right guy yet,” she wrote and then scolded herself silently: shut up, quick, this is too risky.

“Or maybe he hasn’t found you yet,” was the speedy response.

“Good answer,” she wrote.

Phew, she thought, noticing that her forehead was damp with sweat.

“What’s your name?” he wrote, not acknowledging her compliment.

Now the sweat really starting flowing. She wiped her brow with her sleeve and rubbed her temples. Then she quickly typed: “Call me Princess.”

—

L
OUISE JUMPED UP ALL OF A SUDDEN AND STEPPED BACK FROM THE
computer, unable to fathom the consequences of what she had gotten mixed up in. She went to the bathroom and splashed some cold water on her face. At the same time, a feeling that she was on to something was bubbling inside her. Her exhaustion was easing, along with the last traces of her hangover. A wave of empowerment rolled up through her body. They had established contact. Now she just had to act sensibly.

She ought to contact Suhr or Heilmann so one of them could help decide how they should proceed. On the other hand, if she waited too long now, she risked his breaking off contact. He hadn’t asked where she had seen him in town yet. Maybe he figured she’d seen him the night before. Or maybe people just took it for granted that people were checking the photos on Nightwatch because they knew it let you track down people you had seen on the town.

She dried off her face and went back.

“Do you want to get coffee?” he had written while she was away.

She ran to the front hall to grab her cell phone from her purse. She quickly found Heilmann’s cell number and called. It rang for a long time before it went to voicemail. Louise tried her home number, but there was no answer there either. She heard a sound from her computer and knew she had received a new message. She left a message on Heilmann’s answering machine, asking her to call back.

“Fuck,” she said out loud as she hung up. It could be a long time before Heilmann called back, and she couldn’t wait to respond to him. Irritated, she tried Suhr, who picked up after the second ring, but when she heard his voice, she could tell from his standoffish tone that she was interrupting something. She hung up, secretly rejoicing that her phone number wouldn’t show up on his caller ID. What the hell would he have told her to do, anyway? They could run a trace on her computer on Monday if they thought that would give them anything new.

Again she felt unsure if it really was Bjergholdt she had contacted. A man with so much on his conscience wouldn’t be behaving so recklessly, right? The words were all muddled in her head, and she wouldn’t have been able to explain to Suhr that she was sitting at her computer writing to someone who might not even be their suspect. She needed to be a little more sure.

“That sounds nice,” she replied. Then she hit
RETURN
twice and continued, “I’m going out of town this weekend visiting my parents, but I’ll be back Monday so maybe we can set something up when I get back?”