Farewell to Freedom (43 page)

The wind pulled at her hair, blowing it over her face as she turned around and started walking around behind the house, over the large lawn, left wild and natural. She sat down at the table by the fire pit and enjoyed the silence for a second and the scent of the thick carpet of pine needles that formed a natural carpet under the tall trees.

Louise was puzzled by a sound from the room at the back of the downstairs and slowly walked forward through the living room, past the woodstove. She spotted Camilla out in the yard by the long, wide picnic table, which was made of a split tree trunk resting on two stumps.

Camilla had described the layout of the house. On the ground floor, along with the kitchen, bathroom, and living room, there were two guest bedrooms, which were rarely used and mostly for storage. Upstairs there was a second bathroom, three bedrooms, and a little attic room.

There was the sound again, and Louise stood still and listened until she realized it was the ceiling creaking as her colleagues walked around upstairs.

She put a hand on the dining table and stood there for a second to let her heart rate slow down. She didn't know what she'd expected, and decided that most of all she was trying to avoid expecting anything.

She heard the others coming down the stairs, and Stig came over and opened the door of the woodstove, which was burning briskly. A big log was still going strong, even though it had obviously been in the stove for a while.

“Well, there's just no telling,” Stig said after he shut it again. “They could be absolutely anywhere, but it must be somewhere they can get to on foot. What about neighbors? Are there any?”

Camilla had told them about the Jønssons, who had a farm on the other side of the band of pines, which ran through this stretch of woods like a belt.

“About a kilometer away, through the woods,” Louise said, but didn't know if Camilla knew the way. She walked over to open the lock on the patio door and call to Camilla to have her show them in which direction the neighbors lived, when she saw Camilla suddenly jump up and start running toward the woods bordering on the backyard.

The lock jammed and wouldn't budge, despite Louise hitting it. She watched Camilla disappear into the edge of the woods and started running through the kitchen. She had just gotten to the corner of the house and around into the back yard when the screams ripped through the silent forest.

Louise ran through the tall grass, past the table, past the fire pit, but stopped suddenly when Camilla came staggering back from the edge of the woods with her hands clenched together over her head in helplessness, tears streaming, shrieking.

Louise started running again when she saw Camilla collapse, her violent sobs filling Louise with fear.

Stig and their Swedish colleagues were right behind her as she went farther into the woods where a small, narrow path wound its way between the pine trees.

Henrik Holm was lying on his stomach with one arm over his head and the other out to the side. Killed from behind, shot once in the back of the head and twice in the back.

Louise gasped for air and doubled over as though she suddenly had a terrible stitch in her side. The others kept going past her and knelt down next to the body.

Louise didn't need to go all the way to know that the pastor was dead. Liquidated. She was also experienced enough to know that he'd been shot at close range. He hadn't had a chance to get away.

Camilla's sobs sliced through her bones. Louise's vision went black, and she didn't have enough air to stand back up and walk back to her. Instead, she sank down even more and let herself fall onto the forest floor, where she sat with her back against a tree and ignored the sharp pine needles that pierced her knit sweater.

They felt for a pulse, looked at his face. The bullet exited where his mouth had been.

Louise looked away, peering into the darkness between the tree trunks as she heard the Swedish officers on their cell phones, both calling for backup.

61

I
T WAS HIS EYES SHE SAW FIRST
. H
lS EYES FOUND HER THROUGH THE
dense branches. There were several rows of trees between them. Still, she could see his face quite clearly.

Stig had stayed on the footpath, while the other two ran back to the house.

Louise was slowly crawling forward on her knees, squeezing her way between the trunks. When she got there, Jonas's face was hidden in his hands and he was sitting perfectly still. Louise put an arm around him and pulled him to her. Squeezed him and felt his face against her shoulder. He wasn't crying. He wasn't making a sound. She could hardly feel him breathing.

Tears streamed down her cheeks and landed on his hair, but otherwise she felt nothing. The sound of Camilla's deep sobs didn't penetrate this far into the woods, nor did the piercing tones of the first sirens. Not even Stig's gentle voice, talking to her right before he grasped her elbow and started helping her out, while she was still holding the boy in her lap.

Jonas kept his head buried in against her shoulder until they were out on the path, where Stig lifted him up into his arms and carried him to the house with Louise walking right next to him.

As they reached Camilla in the grass, she slowly got up onto her knees and took the hand Louise held out to her. Together they walked up to the house, where first responders' flashing lights made the place feel too crowded. The ambulance and police cars were parked in a long line down by the driveway. None of them had driven all the way up to the house, since the driveway had already been cordoned off.

Louise followed Stig into the living room and let Camilla collapse into the room's only armchair in front of the woodstove, in which there was no longer a glow behind the soot-covered glass door. Louise sat down on the sofa, as Stig let Jonas slowly slip down next to her.

“Do you think it would be better if we put him to bed until we leave here?” her colleague asked, searching her face to see what she thought.

“Just let him lie here,” Louise said and swallowed a couple of times in quick succession when she saw how the boy curled up into a fetal position and hid his face in a cushion.

A weak shiver ran through him as she carefully placed a hand on his shoulder and then quickly pulled it back again; she couldn't even fathom the misfortune this eleven-year-old boy had suffered, and now he may have just witnessed his father being gunned down as well.

The silence in the living room was oppressive.

Jonas was still curled up into a tight ball, breathing so quietly that occasionally Louise feared he'd stopped.

Camilla sat in the armchair staring straight ahead. She was pale and staring off into space. Every once in a while she reacted as an almost invisible shiver ran through her, and she mindlessly clasped her hands together hard, as if a sharp pain were jabbing through her.

Stig had gone out front and was talking to Willumsen by phone. From what she could hear, Louise was going to take Jonas and Camilla back to Denmark in the car after the Swedish police questioned them, knowing full well that the boy was definitely too much in shock to be able to tell them anything. Jakobsen would be waiting at National Hospital to receive them so Jonas could get emergency crisis counseling.

Darkness had fallen outside, and Louise counted about six or eight CSI techs from the Swedish crime lab working both in front of and behind the house. Three were leaning over the tire imprints in the driveway and preparing to take a plaster mold.

Louise held Jonas's hand as they walked to the car. As expected, the boy hadn't been able to tell the police anything about what had happened, so they decided to wait and have him try to talk to them when their own expert crisis psychologist could be present.

Louise noticed Stig standing and watching them as she carefully turned his car around on the narrow forest road and slowly started driving back through the darkness, avoiding the biggest of the potholes.

62

T
HE MURDER OF POPULAR PASTOR
H
ENRIK
H
OLM FILLED THE
newspaper front pages on Monday morning. Only a little bit of the story had leaked, but it was enough to leave people in shock at the brutality of his killing.

The investigative team was gathered in Willumsen's office. No one had slept more than a couple of hours since Louise had arrived at National Hospital late Saturday night with Jonas and Camilla, who were both admitted to be treated for shock. Louise had sat with them until Sunday morning, going directly from the hospital to police HQ.

“MiloÅ¡ Vituk pleaded guilty to the four killings,” Willumsen began, eyeing them with tired eyes, his face unshaven.

“Four?” Louise and Stig exclaimed simultaneously.

“Otto Birch died overnight,” Willumsen informed them sadly. After a moment of silence as that news sank in, he returned to the topic of MiloÅ¡ Vituk. “We searched the cell phone we found on him when we arrested him and, sure enough, it had a different number than the ones we knew about. Igli is just compiling all the numbers. He'll bring a list as soon as he's done.”

He signaled he was changing subjects by taking a gulp of his coffee.

“Late last night, Lars spoke briefly with Otto Birch.”

Willumsen nodded to Louise's partner to have him take over.

“He was very confused about what had happened. He went into the church and was swapping out the candles in the holders when two men came in. They asked for the pastor, and an instant later his legs exploded in pain. He collapsed onto the floor. One man walked right up to him and held a big revolver to his forehead, demanding to know where they had gone. So Otto told him about the house in Sweden and gave them the address. Then that man disappeared. We're assuming this was Bosko, while the other one, who had stayed in the background, stepped forward and aimed at him.”

“Is there any evidence that Bosko was there?” Louise wanted to know. She had asked that same question many times since Sunday morning, but Willumsen had shaken his head each time.

“MiloÅ¡ Vituk was brought before a judge yesterday at 2:00, and after confessing, was remanded for four weeks.”

“But he wasn't the one behind the murders,” Toft said, without removing the plastic cigarette from his mouth. He'd been sitting with the Serb ever since his arrest Saturday afternoon, right up until they had escorted him down to see the judge for his preliminary hearing.

Willumsen shook his head.

“That's not what we're trying to prove here. Frandsen has had his CSI techs working all night, and he called twenty minutes ago to say that he is on his way over from Slotsherrensvej. But obviously he has to make it through morning rush-hour traffic before he'll be here,” Willumsen added, pulling the printout of an e-mail out of the stack he had in front of him on the table.

“We received a report from the DNA lab. They confirmed that the same DNA was found on the girl murdered in Kødbyen and Kaj Antonsen. And,” he said, drawing it out a little, “the murdered prostitute in Prague. They sent the results to the international database and we have a match with Bosko. He's been charged multiple times for violent assaults, but they've had to let him go each time because of a lack of evidence. We don't have anything on MiloÅ¡ Vituk. However, we ran the fingerprints the techs found in the big Volvo in Helsingør through our automated fingerprint ID system, but we didn't get any hits. But Interpol did find a match when they ran it through their system. Helsingør also sent us prints from the surveillance footage from when the ferry disembarked in Helsingborg.”

He pushed two pictures out onto the table.

“Bosko!”

The Serb was walking purposefully down the hallway, making no attempt to hide his face. To the contrary, he was looking right up into the camera in one of the pictures. In the corner, the computer had printed that the passenger walked by at 3:07
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