Farewell to Freedom (41 page)

Now he was standing in front of her again with a frightened look, watching her as she feverishly rooted around in the outermost pocket of her wallet where she stuffed all her old receipts.

“Please go to your room,” she said.

She found the little torn-off scrap of paper on which Henrik had written his cell number, ran into the living room, and grabbed the phone. For a second she felt a wave of panic as the cell phone went straight to voicemail without being answered. She could tell the phone was turned off. She ran back to the entry and snatched her jacket from the hook, checking to see that her car keys were in her pocket.

“I have to run out,” she yelled to Markus, who was lying on his bed with his face to the wall.

For a second she stood there, looking at the rejection of his skinny back, before she turned around.

“I'll be back soon,” she promised as she turned the lock.

If the police had stopped her, they would have confiscated her license on the spot, but she carefully avoided looking at the speedometer as she darted down Nordre Fasanvej.

From the second she got home from the pastor's residence, part of her had been thinking she should go down to Police Headquarters and tell them what the pastor had confided in her so they could head out there and protect him. At the same time, another part of her forced her to keep her promise and give him the head start he was going to need to get himself and Jonas to safety.

His car was gone, she noted with a little sigh of relief as she pulled into the parking lot and turned off her engine. There weren't any other cars parked there, either. The only thing she could see was the sexton's old bicycle, which was propped against the wall of the church. There wasn't a person in sight.

She inhaled all the way down to her diaphragm and let it out again slowly before walking across the courtyard, stopping to listen for a second. No movement, no voices, nothing.

In the car she'd decided to hightail it out of there if there was the slightest indication that the Serb was there. Then she'd have to call the police and let them take over. But mostly she just wanted to make sure that Henrik and Jonas had managed to get away. Then she would tell Louise why Henrik had fled.

Now she was feeling rather sure that Henrik had already left, and if this is where Bosko and Miloš Vituk were headed, they must have already come and gone.

The sun reflected in the kitchen window as she walked up and let the door knocker fall. For a second she stood there waiting, then leaned to the right and peered in the window. The basket of morning rolls was still sitting on the table. Things looked pretty much as they had when she and Markus had left.

Camilla walked down the stairs and around the building before continuing out into the yard. Over by the patio door she put both hands up against the window and peered into the living room. It was hard to see if he'd packed anything, but she did note that the laptop wasn't on the desk anymore.

Again a sense of relief dissolved some of her tension.

She scanned the road leading to the cemetery for the sexton, to find out if he knew when they'd left. She walked down and around the shed, by where the wheelbarrow and watering can were, and where she'd occasionally seen the sexton enjoying a cheroot when the weather permitted it.

Finally, she walked up toward the church and hesitated slightly before walking in. But the floor was bare; there weren't any more newborns there. On the other hand, there was an open box of white candles on the bench next to a yellow plastic watering can.

She walked over and opened the door from the entryway into the main body of the church, calling to the sexton to avoid startling him in the event that he was in there finishing something up.

The blood was the first thing she saw. The light from the broad windows in the roof of the church cast reflections down, which caused it to shine on the dark stone floor.

The door slammed shut behind her as she ran forward without giving even a thought to the fact that maybe she should have been running
out
instead of
in
.

58

H
IS EYES WERE CLOSED
. H
E WAS LYING ON HIS SIDE WITH HIS TORSO
half up on the kneeling pillows in front of the altar, and the blood had dyed his light summer jeans and shirt dark red where it had spread through the material in big splotches. It spread across his chest all the way out over the shoulder and left arm, which was resting on the floor, and there were colored areas on both knees, like two oval patches with frayed edges.

Camilla instinctively stepped back and sank down into a squat. She inhaled deeply a couple of times to keep herself from hyperventilating before she got up to put a finger on the sexton's wrist. If there was any beat at all, the pulse was so weak that her inexperienced fingers couldn't find it.

She managed to tell the dispatcher clearly and precisely what she'd found once she got through to 112, but she couldn't answer the question of whether or not he was still alive.

“I think he was shot. He's bleeding from both knees and his chest.”

As she was talking, she got up and in uncertain steps started backing away over the floor of the church, her eyes trained on the sexton's powerful body. She should stay with him until the ambulance arrived, she thought, but she didn't dare. She knew that if Otto Birch was still alive, he might need her, but her fear that Bosko would return trumped that thought. She was almost out the door when she suddenly stopped.

“Is he still breathing?” the dispatcher's voice calmly asked.

“I don't know,” she answered hoarsely, and cleared her throat before repeating herself a little louder.

The thought
it's too late to be a coward
flashed through her head. The only thing that made her consider trying to run away was the image of Markus, lying in bed at home with his back to her. But that wasn't enough given that there was a man lying on the floor in front of her, a man who was dying if he hadn't already.

“Feel his throat and see if he has a pulse,” the man's voice urged, and said that the ambulance was on its way.

Camilla ran back up to the altar and dropped down onto the floor next to the still body.

“Take two fingers and hold them gently against his throat. Don't press,” he instructed her.

“I think there's a pulse,” Camilla whispered, closing her eyes to concentrate.

“Find something that you can press against the wound on his torso and hold it there until the ambulance arrives.”

There was no acceptable way to tell the dispatcher that she didn't know if she would be sticking around that long. As she tossed her jacket aside and pulled off her cardigan, she felt a strange sense of calm allaying the fear that, a moment earlier, had been on the verge of making her flee the scene.

She unbuttoned his shirt and determined that the gunshot wound was in his chest, and she put some muscle into it as she leaned over him and pressed her cardigan against the bloody opening.

In a relatively calm voice, she started talking to the wounded man. If he could hear her, it might help him to know the ambulance was on its way. If he couldn't hear anything, repeating those same words made her feel calm. She promised that she would stay until the EMTs got there and took him to the hospital.

“I told where the house is,” he whispered, still with his eyes closed. The words sounded like pebbles, but she understood and straightened up a little.

With her free hand, she pulled her cell phone out of her jacket, which she'd tossed on the floor when she took her cardigan off.

Louise's number appeared after three quick taps.

“Just shut up for a second,” Camilla hissed into the phone, turning her head away from the injured man as Louise started to object. “I'm sitting in Stenhøj Church. The sexton is lying on the floor next to me. He's been shot at least three times. The ambulance is on its way. I'm trying to keep the blood from gushing out of him until they get here.”

Finally Louise was starting to listen, and Camilla told her how she'd arrived at the church and found Otto Birch on the floor.

“While you've been standing around waiting, Bosko has been out here assaulting this poor, elderly man, and I know why, too. He's looking for Henrik Holm and Jonas. We have to get to them before Bosko finds them.”

“What do you know about Bosko?” Louise asked, astonished.

Camilla felt like she could almost see inside Louise's head, where the pieces were not quite all fitting together.

“Just get out here now; then I'll explain,” Camilla implored, concentrating the whole time on pressing her cardigan against the wound. “It goes back to when the pastor and his wife were in Bosnia.”

59

T
HE AMBULANCE AND THE
EMT
S PULLED UP IN FRONT OF THE
church just as Michael Stig parked in the courtyard.

Camilla ran out of the church toward them and pulled open the back door of the police car.

“We're going to Sweden,” she yelled with her jacket over her arm, getting in. “I think Henrik Holm might have driven up to his farmhouse there, and I'm afraid Bosko is right on his heels.”

Louise hadn't been able to tell Stig much as they stood in the doorway, and Louise suddenly ordered him to scrap the stakeout and drive out to the church, aside from the fact there was a seriously wounded man, and that it sounded like that might be where Bosko and Miloš Vituk had gone.

On the way to her colleague's car, Louise had called Willumsen, who had just been notified of the shooting victim by the central duty desk, but it was news to him that Camilla was at the church. Louise told him Bosko was after the pastor. He did not want to obey Camilla's request, though, and wanted to send Lars and Toft out to the church instead of Louise and Stig.

“Are you sure it was Bosko and MiloÅ¡?” Stig asked, looking at Camilla in the rearview mirror as she slammed the car door shut.

She nodded.

He watched her face in the mirror and listened as she started—in hectic snippets—in on her story, which was news to the two policemen.

Camilla desperately brushed a couple of long strands of hair out of her face before she continued.

“This morning he told me the whole thing. He said he had to disappear, and the man in the church, Otto Birch, said that he'd told where the house is. So I'm guessing that he went up there to start with, to gain a little time. He had no way of knowing that Bosko would react so fast.”

The gravel flew as Michael Stig put it in gear and backed up to where he could turn around, and it flew up and hit the underside of the car as he accelerated and then navigated his way out of the narrow driveway into the courtyard.

Louise looked at him in surprise. It was one thing that Louise knew Camilla well enough to know that her friend was serious about this, but Louise was taken aback that Stig didn't ask any more questions before obeying Camilla's orders.

Camilla sat still, breathing deeply for a bit as they sped down Stenhøj Allé. Then she leaned forward between the front seats and started to tell them, in more or less coherent sentences, why Henrik Holm had been forced to flee.

Louise listened intently while in her head trying to figure out who they ought to contact with the Swedish police to request assistance so they could have a patrol sent out to the pastor's summer home and also get permission for them to drive into Sweden.

“Afraid I can't help,” Camilla said, resigned, when Louise interrupted her to get the address. Louise then recommended that Stig get it from central dispatch.

“I don't know the address. It's a numbered road. It's a little forest service road, and they use some idiotic system that doesn't make any sense to people like us who are used to roads with names and houses with numbers. But I was there over Easter last year, and could certainly recognize the place. We just head up toward Helsingborg to start with, and then on toward Laholm.”