Farewell to Freedom (22 page)

Camilla had found out earlier in the day that the police were ready to release Kaj Antonsen's body. No distant relatives had come forward yet. His ex-wife hadn't been in touch, either, and since she had declined to have any further involvement, Camilla was given permission to handle the practical details. She put in an obituary for the next day's paper saying the funeral would be at Stenhøj Church on Saturday.

“No, I don't have the deceased's birth certificate or baptismal records,” she repeated patiently to the funeral director after she'd handed him the paperwork she
did
have from the police when they released the body to her.

“No, I don't have his spouse's birth certificate or their marriage certificate. But they've been divorced for years now,” Camilla said.

Even though she'd already told him everything over the phone, the funeral director had asked her to run through the standard questions again.

Camilla gave Louise a pleading look. Camilla's smile was a little stiff, but she was trying to stay calm and she just nodded briefly when the funeral director decided they would just have to do without the separation papers.

But when the funeral director repeated his question about a birth certificate, Camilla finally had enough.

“Look, I assume you're aware that the deceased was the victim of a spectacular and extremely violent murder. The police are hard at work right now trying to locate his murderer, which is why they have not yet had the opportunity to provide me with all of his personal papers. But, obviously, we could ask the police to switch around their priorities a little so they have time to get the paperwork in place before we plan the rest,” Camilla said angelically.

Louise stayed back, pretending to study a framed poster listing most of the routine questions the funeral director would likely ask.

“And your relationship to the deceased?” the funeral director asked, looking up from his form. He had obviously decided to ignore Camilla's sarcastic outburst. “Ah, yes. You're the reporter who wrote the story in
Morgenavisen
, right?”

Camilla made do with a nod.

“Good,” the funeral director finally said. “So, I'm going to assume you don't have a burial permit or a deed to a burial plot?”

“Correct,” Camilla said tersely. “I don't think he was prepared to have someone slit his neck just then.”

Louise turned and gave her a look.

The man behind the desk let her remark slide once again and instead walked over to the wall where the urns were displayed.

“Have you had a chance to think about which urn you're interested in?”

Camilla took a step back to look at the selection.

“It doesn't need to be anything special,” she said. “A standard one, if there's such a thing.”

The funeral director raised his eyebrow for a second and looked at Camilla.

“There isn't. But you can certainly get one without too many frills,” he said, pointing up at a black vessel with a flat lid. The tag underneath said, “Simple.” Next to that there was a “Simple Exclusive,” and then the rest of them became progressively more ornate.

Camilla pointed to the no-frills urn and asked whether everything could be arranged in time for the funeral on Saturday.

“We have the pastor scheduled for 1
P
.
M
.,” she said.

The funeral director nodded; he was obviously interested in wrapping up his business with Camilla Lind as quickly and efficiently as possible.

27

T
HE AFTERNOON SUN SHONE FROM A SPRING SKY PRACTICALLY
devoid of clouds, and they were lucky that the Belis Bar had a free table outside on the square in front of Frederiksberg Town Hall.

Louise ordered two beers in the hopes that maybe that would help them shake off the funereal mood a little, and as she took her first sip she realized she didn't feel the least bit guilty about letting her partner hold the fort alone down on Valdemarsgade. At the morning briefing, Willumsen had made it clear that he didn't think there was any reason to keep an eye on Miloš Vituk and the Czech girls anymore, but Suhr hadn't agreed. So they had decided to continue the surveillance at least for the rest of the day.

The only thing they'd noted so far was that Pavlína had brought a guest home with her—a young woman about the same age who had a bouquet of flowers that Louise figured were for Hana.

Louise watched Camilla sip at the thick foam at the top of her beer. She was worried about Camilla, but not as much as she had been the first couple of days after the murder. Camilla's chat with the crisis psychologist had apparently allowed her to acknowledge that some things were out of her control, even if she might have helped trigger them herself. Camilla was still weighed down with self-recrimination and guilt, but right now at least she was planning on using her leave of absence to reevaluate her goals in life and the steps she needed to take to achieve them.

“Right now I don't have the slightest desire to go back to the paper,” she admitted when Louise asked what she was thinking.

“What do you want to do, then?” Louise asked, holding her beer in her hands as she tilted her head back, enjoying the sunlight.

“I don't know,” Camilla said after a pause. “I might start writing books.” Louise smiled. What journalist wouldn't want to do that?

“Well, I recommend you write a murder mystery and become world-famous—then you'll be rolling in money,” Louise said with her eyes closed, the warmth spreading from her face to the rest of her body. “Plus it'll get you away from
Morgenavisen.”

She heard Camilla scoot her chair slightly, but she didn't say anything for quite a while.

“Maybe. But first I want to have a baby.”

This news was so abrupt that Louise opened her eyes and gaped at her friend, who was watching a young mother pushing a stroller down the sidewalk in front of them.

Louise leaned over the table and set down her beer.

“You
have
a child,” she reminded Camilla, who was watching the stroller with a serious expression, which confused Louise.

“I've always dreamed of having a whole bunch of kids, actually. And ever since I had Markus, I've known that I wanted one or two more, but nothing ever became of it. So, I've decided to do something about that dream so I won't have to look back and regret not even having tried.”

“For Christ's sake, Camilla. You have plenty of time—you're only thirty-eight! You make it sound like you're closer to fifty. But you're also going to have to find the guy you want to have these kids with. Children are still something people dream about having
together
, usually.”

Louise hadn't intended to sound quite so scolding, but Camilla picked up on it right away.

“Why do you always get so uptight whenever kids come up?” Camilla asked, irritated. “You're so down on kids.”

“Oh, come on. That's ridiculous. But you already have Markus, after all, and he's the
best
. Besides, I guess I think people sound spoiled when they say their ‘whole life' is a failure just because they haven't had the number of children they wanted.”

Camilla took a swig of beer and looked at Louise, who vaguely suspected that the abandoned baby from the church had put this notion in her friend's head.

“I don't understand how you can be so negative when you don't even know what you're missing,” Camilla said. “It's not like you haven't had a chance to have kids, either. If it'd been up to Peter, you'd have five by now. I think you're running the risk yourself of waking up one day and realizing it's too late.”

Louise felt the emotion before it showed in her eyes. She went completely cold inside. Here she'd been thinking they would spend a couple of pleasant hours together, Camilla would be able to get things off her chest, and maybe that would help her relax about all her inner turmoil. Instead, the conversation had wound up here—where there was no comfortable way out.

She sat up straight and tried to sound more upbeat than the cutting remarks that were otherwise on the tip of her tongue.

“I came to terms a long time ago with the fact that I don't think having kids is a right,” she said. “Some people have kids, some don't. It's not something you can expect. Or an indicator of your life's success. You know I don't go around wishing my life was different than it is, and it's just turned out that my life doesn't include kids. But that doesn't make it a bad life.”

Louise leaned back, realizing that her voice was sounding defensive despite her best efforts.

“I don't mean to nag you,” Camilla said, trying to calm Louise down. “But it's different for me. I'm not sure I have time to wait for the right person to come along, so I'm considering artificial insemination.”

Louise was speechless as she shook her head.

“As long as you don't make the government pay for it, well, good luck. I'll take care of Markus when you're breastfeeding.”

Louise got up to pay. She was sad that the mood had been ruined. What bugged her the most, really, was that children had become a criterion for a successful life, and who cared whether they were born out of love as long as you had them. If that was it, she'd rather be free. She remembered an old case where she visited a fortuneteller, who in all seriousness told her that a child's soul chose the mother it wanted before it was born. Personally, Louise was just fine with the fact that no child's soul had picked her.

Camilla and Louise walked across the square to Falkoner Allé in silence.

“I can tell you've already made up your mind,” Louise said before they said good-bye.

Camilla nodded. “You know how I feel about people who talk up a storm about all the things they want but never step up and make it reality. If I'm going to criticize other people for all their empty talk, well then I'd better fucking step up and do something about my own life. Otherwise I ought to just shut up,” Camilla said.

Louise smiled.

“Well, I know you well enough to be fairly sure this shutting-up phase won't last long,” Louise said before giving Camilla a quick kiss on the cheek in farewell and hurrying across the street when the light turned green.

On the other side she stopped and watched as Camilla's back disappeared toward Falkoner Center.

28

“T
HIS IS GOING TO TAKE FUCKING
MONTHS
,” W
ILLUMSEN SAID
, irritatedly brushing cake crumbs off the papers on the table in front of him. The team was meeting around the conference table on Friday afternoon before heading home for the weekend, and Willumsen was glaring at Stig, who had just said they still didn't have enough on the Albanians to take action.

“Obviously we can haul them in for questioning and check their alibis, but that would make it pretty obvious that we've been watching them, and we still don't have enough to hold them,” Stig continued. “We're going to have to wait until we have more. We just haven't gotten much out of the last couple of days of surveillance. We don't have any witnesses to the two murders, and after what happened to Kaj Antonsen, we shouldn't expect people to suddenly feel like talking to us either. Instead, let's keep watching and gathering info. It's really not enough that they drive a car that's identical to the one that was seen on Skelbækgade the same evening that prostitute's throat was slit, or at the harbor for that matter. And we have nothing at all to tie the Albanians to the location where Antonsen was killed.”

“Yeah, which is exactly why we need to find out where they were when all that happened,” Willumsen growled, staring at Stig until he eventually looked away. “You've been following them. What have we gotten out of that?”

Toft set a stack of pictures on the table. They were all taken in the last couple of days and showed the Eastern European women on and around Istedgade. There were pictures of the prostitutes standing on the sidewalk with different men, walking into Club Intim with their johns, and leaning over to talk into rolled-down windows of cars.

“Things really pick up around closing time,” Stig commented as he explained that he had accompanied the photographer. “And then there's another rush after dinner and kind of steady traffic until a good while past midnight, depending on the weather.”

“Did you see any Roma women or girls?” Toft asked, pulling a menthol cartridge for his plastic cigarette out of his shirt pocket under his sweater. “Some of the girls on the street aren't much more than thirteen or fourteen, and I've heard their families are the ones who send them to Denmark in the first place.” Louise realized that Toft's own granddaughter, Ida, was just that age.

“The group on the streets right now apparently arrived a few months ago. They have to earn money for the grand houses their fathers are building. According to one of the girls down at The Nest, the girls were sent to Italy first but couldn't earn enough there. So they were sent up here, and now they're hanging out down at Halmtorvet in front of the convention center.”