Farewell to Freedom (16 page)

Louise learned that they had obtained a four-week wiretap warrant, and with the electronic chip Toft had mounted on the car they could now follow the dark Audi A4 via a screen in the command and control center.

“One of the boys is monitoring it in there, so we'll know the second he puts the key in the ignition. And we're working on getting an interpreter to help with the wiretap,” Toft said, mostly to Suhr. “I hope it's Igli. He does Albanian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, and Czech. He's going to call in around lunchtime and let us know if he's available. I just talked to him, but he was at some little league soccer game out in Hvidovre and his son had just scored a goal. He had to go home and look at his calendar before he could make any promises.”

Suhr nodded, satisfied. Igli was one of their best interpreters when it came to cases that involved people from the Balkans. He has been a police officer in the former Yugoslavia, and the homicide squad benefited from his experience whenever he worked with them on a case. Suhr asked Lars and Louise to go through Camilla's account, from when she met Kaj to when they parted ways. Especially whether she had noticed anyone keeping an eye on them.

Louise promised they would let him know.

“I can't bear it,” Camilla exclaimed after Suhr left. “It just occurred to me now that I put a couple hundred extra kroner on our tab for Kaj to use when I paid at the bar and obviously they had my name on the receipt for that. I just didn't even think about it. I wanted to do something nice for him, as a kind of thank-you for the story. Plus I'd had a few too many beers to be thinking about things on that level.”

Camilla hid her face in her hands, and Louise thought Mikkelsen must have had his reasons for not wanting to talk to Kaj until he could go visit him at his home where no one could see them. But she didn't say anything, just put her hand on Camilla's shoulder while Lars called Mikkelsen and told him about the two hundred kroner and the debit card receipt. When he hung up, Lars said someone would go talk to the waitress so they could find out if anyone had asked to see the receipt after Camilla had left.

“So Michael Stig
did
see you out there that night,” Lars said, and Camilla nodded dully.

“I just feel so awful about it,” Camilla said Sunday evening when they were sitting on Louise's sofa over a bottle of red wine. “It feels every bit as bad as if I'd murdered him with my own hands. Anyway, it's my fault he died such a gruesome death.”

Louise listened and let her talk. At first she'd tried to contradict her and assuage her guilt, but Camilla had told her to stop that.

“There's no getting around it. I have to own up to what I did.”

“Yeah, but for Pete's sake, you were just doing your job. Neither you nor Kaj, for that matter, could have predicted that your conversation could have led to this.”

“I mean, he was talking to me to protect himself,” Camilla reminded herself. “Otherwise he could have just gone to you guys. If he'd done that, he might still be alive.”

Louise filled her glass, but held back on Camilla's.

“You were protecting him,” Louise said and got up to light a few candles in the living room. She went over to the stereo and put Big Fat Snake on repeat before sinking back down onto the sofa. “But you didn't need to go in to the paper today and write that article about your own role in the killing. Why are you putting all the blame on yourself? And so publicly?”

Camilla looked at her, her eyes unflinching, as if Louise was the edge of a cliff between her and the abyss.

“There's no doubt what triggered everything yesterday,” Camilla said plainly. “It's horrific every way you look at it, but I have to stand by it. And the readers deserve to know the kind of ruthless sickos we're dealing with here. Besides, I've seen way too many reporters stick their tails between their legs and refuse to take responsibility when they push their sources over the edge by leaking information and digging up dirt. I mean, you can't stoop any lower than that.”

They stopped by Camilla's place and packed her a bag of clothes and toiletries to take to Louise's apartment, and, contrary to expectations, Camilla didn't protest.

“I told the paper I wanted to take a leave of absence,” Camilla said suddenly, with her toothbrush in her hand, after Louise had made up the guest room. “And if they don't give it to me, I'm going to quit. But I think I'm going to quit anyway,” she added after a moment's thought.

Louise nodded. She had spoken with Camilla's boss herself. He was deeply concerned about one of his top reporters and told Louise he was prepared to support her. In the end,
he
was the one who'd run her byline photo with the article without thinking about it.

“I'd really like your permission to call a crisis psychologist I know at National Hospital,” Louise said from the doorway to the guest room once Camilla was tucked into bed. “His name's Jakobsen. He's really good. And there's no point in your beating yourself up with all this guilt. There's really a risk all this will overwhelm you.”

Louise expected a bunch of protests; so when they didn't come, she could almost hear her pre-planned, must-convince-Camilla speech crash and burn.

“That's probably a good idea,” Camilla said, turning off the light.

19

“I
'
M GUESSING THEY WANTED TO SECURE HIS TONGUE SO HE
couldn't scream,” Flemming Larsen said as he and Louise sat in his office Monday morning following the autopsy. “Given the configuration of the courtyard, the killer or killers were probably standing in the archway waiting for him. They grabbed him from behind and plunged the knife under his chin so it attached his tongue to his palate. That silenced him while they dragged him into the courtyard and splayed him out between the four benches.”

“Which is why no one heard anything.”

Louise took one of the two sodas Flemming brought up to his office from the vending machine and was glad that he, too, valued their friendship enough to take a little extra time to discuss the autopsy with her.

Her mind filled with images of the courtyard off Sønder Boulevard. There had been a number of bikes along the wall of the building in front of the garbage cans, so someone could easily have entered the courtyard while the murder was taking place, she thought, picturing the location of Kaj's body.

“How long did it take for him to die?” she wondered aloud, looking over at Flemming, who was almost done with his Fanta.

“We know he was still alive when he was tied to the benches. You yourself saw that his hands were dark and filled with blood,” Flemming said, and added that they were also a little swollen. “That tells us there was still circulation in his body.”

Louise nodded as he spoke and peered down at a couple of the crime-scene photos showing enlargements of the details on his hands and throat.

“He has red foam around his mouth,” Flemming continued. “That means he started aspirating his own blood. The blood that goes down the trachea froths up as the victim breathes rapidly out of fear. So I'm sure he lived for a while before he asphyxiated.”

Louise closed her eyes for a moment, acknowledging the shiver of horror that traveled through her body.

“In other words, he choked on his own blood,” she said, opening her eyes again.

The gravity of the situation had drawn a deep wrinkle across the tall coroner's forehead. He nodded thoughtfully.

“As long as his tongue was stuck, he couldn't swallow. After that, it looks like they turned the knife around and pulled it, creating a long incision which sliced open his throat and trachea longitudinally all the way down to his breastbone, where the incision fades away on the left side of the anterior thorax.”

Louise couldn't hide the shudder that coursed through her, and she knew Flemming well enough to tell that he, too, was profoundly affected by the depravity of this murder.

“They knew exactly what they wanted to do with this execution,” she said blocking out the light and sounds for a second while the pieces of this portrait of bestiality fell into place.

“To show everyone in that world that you keep your mouth shut if you see something,” Flemming said, finishing her idea.

Their eyes met as that fact became clear.

“And all the same, they took the time to tie him up and do the job thoroughly before leaving him there in the courtyard. Which shows that whoever did this couldn't have cared less if anyone happened to walk into the courtyard and catch him in the act,” Flemming concluded.

Louise got up and stuck the crime-scene techs' pictures back into the bag. Flemming came over and put his arms around her shoulders, looking into her eyes the whole time.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

Louise sighed and shrugged.

“Mostly it's Camilla who's not okay,” she responded. “I just really want to find out who's evil enough to subject a harmless elderly man to this. I mean, here's the evidence of how pointlessly brutal Eastern European crime gangs are—and apparently we've got them here in Copenhagen now, too.”

“Yeah, you have to admit these people are more ruthless than the criminals we're used to,” Flemming admitted, pulling Louise into a slow embrace as they reached the elevator.

“Take care of yourself,” he told her, as the elevator door opened in front of them.

Louise gave his hand a squeeze and thanked him for the soda, before stepping in and pressing the
LOBBY
button to return to Police Headquarters and her Monday briefing, which had been pushed back until after the autopsy.

“This morning our interpreter, Igli, intercepted information that Arian is going to go pick someone up at the airport this afternoon,” Willumsen reported once everyone was gathered around the circular conference table in Suhr's office. “It's Sterling flight NB564 scheduled to arrive from Prague at 1:55
P
.
M
.,” he continued. “And I want all four of you out there. We're going to get to the fucking bottom of what's going on now. Before they slaughter anyone else.”

Toft nodded.

“Do you want us to follow his car out there? Or not make contact until he reaches the arrivals hall?” he asked, looking from Willumsen to Suhr.

“You two go wait at the airport,” Willumsen responded, pointing to Toft and Stig. “Louise and Lars will tail them out there. But stay well back. Don't let them see you.”

“We're just going to be watching,” Suhr added.

The group's mood had been tense ever since Kaj Antonsen's murder. Everyone had realized that they were going up against people who did not value human life the way you might expect, and it was still fairly rare to encounter this type of criminal in Denmark, even here in the capital.

“Get out there and get into position. It's less than two hours until the plane lands, and I don't want you running through the airport at the last minute,” Willumsen commanded. “From now on, we're going be right on their asses.”