Only One Life (19 page)

“Sorry!” exclaimed one of the older men, who had accidentally bumped into her.

“Well, I suppose you two might as well do the next assisted recovery,” Mik said.

Louise got the kayak flipped over and drained the water out of it. She quite easily crawled up so she was lying on her stomach and her legs half down into the hole. With her kayak being held good and steady, she slowly turned around so she was lying with her head over the back end, and cautiously slid down into the kayak. She felt victorious having succeeded on her first try.

“Bravo!” Mik yelled, paddling over and giving her a high five.

There was a good feeling in her body when the class ended shortly after that and they helped carry the kayaks back to where they were stored. She accepted the offer Mik made to let her borrow one of his extra towels and headed inside to get dressed. She wrung out her undergarments and although she wasn’t crazy about wearing her jeans and T-shirt with nothing underneath, she decided there was really no way around it.

“That went extremely well,” her partner complimented her as they walked out of the clubhouse together.

She smiled and thanked him for having enticed her to try it.

“It was a lot more fun than I thought it would be,” she admitted before climbing into the car to drive by her hotel room and put on some dry underwear. Just after she’d arrived in Holbæk, her mother had invited her to come over for dinner since she was so close, and tonight was the night. Her brother, Mike, and his wife, Stine, would be there too, along with their two little terrorists, and as she drove back to the hotel she realized she was actually looking forward to spending a nice evening with her family.

18

I
T WAS ALMOST ELEVEN WHEN
L
OUISE
,
FULL AND IN A GOOD MOOD
, pulled into the parking lot by the hotel. In the car on the way home from her parents’ house, she had decided she would go for a run the next morning before work. She walked over to the train station on the other side of the street to look at the big map of Holbæk and the surrounding area that was posted by the entrance. She was trying to decide whether to drive out a ways and go for a run in the woods or make do with a run along the shore, following the sound out of town.

She was preoccupied with planning her route when, with disgust, she registered the sound of someone vomiting behind her and turned around. At first she didn’t recognize the person, doubled over with one arm on the railing around the train station’s bike racks, supporting herself as the vomit poured out of her in waves. Then she realized who it was and hurried over in concern.

“Dicta! What’s going on?”

It took a moment before the girl shakily stood up. She guessed that the starting point for Dicta’s current appearance had been heavy makeup, which was now everywhere other than where it was supposed to be.

Louise walked over and put her arm around Dicta. She found a pack of Kleenexes in her pocket and took one out, which she used to dab the remaining vomit away from the girl’s mouth and chin.

Even from a distance, she’d sensed that Dicta was pretty drunk, and they wobbled as Louise started walking toward the hotel with her. She got her seated in the restaurant, which had been empty of guests for a while. Then Louise made herself at home and went into the kitchen for a glass of water and found a bag the girl could throw up into if necessary. She set the glass down in front of Dicta and took a seat next to her.

“What did you do?” Louise asked.

Dicta didn’t respond, didn’t even look at Louise. She seemed to be falling asleep. Louise took a firm hold of her shoulder and shook her. “Where have you been? Hello!”

The girl shook her head a little and tried to focus her swimming eyes on Louise’s face. A spasm overtook her and Louise only just barely managed to get the bag in place before a new wave of vomit erupted from her mouth.

Goddamn it
, she thought as some of it hit her hand. She went back to the kitchen and washed her hands, found a new bag, and went back in to ask the question again.

“In Copenhagen,” Dicta finally answered. “All day,” she said, looking up at Louise.

“And what were you doing in Copenhagen besides drinking yourself into a stupor?” Louise asked, trying not to sound like a mother.

For a second it looked like Dicta was going to throw up again, but it was just a tremor that ran through her body. She rubbed her face and looked at her hands in astonishment at the colors from her makeup that had rubbed off.

“I was working,” she said in a weak voice. She looked like she felt wretched, and Louise felt bad for her. She was guessing it was the first time Dicta had gotten really drunk.

“A photography job?” she asked.

Dicta nodded, and now such obvious tremors ran through her body that Louise was beginning to fear that it wasn’t just alcohol she’d consumed.

“Did you take drugs? Pills? Or smoke something?”

Dicta vehemently shook her head.

“I just drank champagne.”

Louise forced her to drink some more water and relaxed a little to hear it had just been champagne. Although that could be bad enough when you were fifteen and almost certainly hadn’t had it before. It struck Louise that she probably ought to call the girl’s parents instead of sitting here herself with the sad dregs of their daughter.

“What about your parents?” she asked. “I have to call them.”

Dicta shook her head again.

“Were you with your photographer?” Louise asked, already prepared for the scolding the
Venstrebladet
photographer could look forward to after dropping his young model off outside the train station in this condition.

Dicta suddenly looked childishly proud in the midst of all her misery as she told Louise that she’d been photographed by one of the big-name photographers.

“He photographed Lykke May too,” she said, clearly assuming that Louise would be familiar with the name of one of Denmark’s most successful models.

“Can you give me a few more details? I’m not quite following. How did you end up with him?”

Dicta had perked up a bit.

“I’d seen his name in a few magazines, and then yesterday I called him and he invited me in for a photo session.”

There were a few too many Ss in “session,” and she struggled to get control of her pronunciation as she continued.

“I took the train in this morning and we met at Café Ketchup and had brunch. His studio is right next door.”

Louise was a little surprised at how uncomplicated and familiar she made it all sound.

“Do you usually go to Copenhagen like that?” she asked. “It sounds like you’re familiar with the cafés.”

Dicta shook her head and said that she’d never been there before—she’d just read about it. She and Liv had been to Copenhagen over summer vacation, but otherwise she usually went there with her parents.

That reminded Louise that she had to contact them. “Do your parents know that you’re back?”

“They think I’m at Liv’s house,” Dicta said, brushing aside Louise’s objections.

“But they know you went to Copenhagen?”

This was starting to sound like an interrogation and Louise noticed Dicta receding into her own world again, so Louise restrained herself and let the girl go on with her story.

“His studio was really impressive compared to the one Michael has here at home,” Dicta said, describing the walls with the different photographic backdrops and a bunch of lights and filters to tone down the light.

“What does Michael Mogensen have to say about your finding yourself another photographer?”

“He doesn’t know I went there. Michael’s totally not in the same league. Tue says that too,” she said, explaining that the Copenhagen photographer’s name was Tue Sunds and that he had already explained to her over the phone that if she was really dreaming about making it big on an international level, she was going to have to stop wasting her time in a Podunk town like Holbæk.

“Michael is really just small potatoes, a provincial photographer,” Dicta said with a level of disdain that was the result of her visit to the big city.

“Why did Tue Sunds want to meet you on a Saturday?” Louise interrupted when the question occurred to her. “I hope you didn’t take your clothes off for him.”

Dicta turned to face her angrily, and there was something comical about the gesture because she still hadn’t regained full control over her speech or coordination. She flung out her hands, whacking the back of one of them against the edge of the table.

“Are you crazy? I wouldn’t do that!”

“Did you two go anywhere else?” Louise asked.

The girl sat for a bit before responding that they’d only been to the café and then he took a couple of pictures of her.

“Just a couple?”

That didn’t seem like very many considering the man had spent his Saturday on this. In that case, it was probably a desire to maximize his income, Louise supposed.

“I mean, he
is
a professional,” Dicta retorted quickly. “He’s totally not like Michael, who spends several hours on a single pose. Tue works for the big magazines.”

“But you didn’t get home until now? Or had you already been back in Holbæk for a while when I met you?”

Dicta obviously had to think about that one for a minute. Maybe she just couldn’t remember how or when she’d come back.

“I took the train home and had just gotten back. And then standing there outside the station I suddenly had to throw up.”

Louise shook her head at the girl.

“What did you guys do for the rest of the day?”

“We went out and drank champagne to celebrate our new collaboration.” Dicta sounded proud. “He said one of the heads of the big modeling agencies often came to the same place and that he would introduce us.”

Louise sat there with her arms crossed.

“Did you go back to his place after that?” she asked, and Dicta nodded so that her long, blonde hair fell down over her face in wisps.

“We drank more wine and ate the sushi and caviar he ordered before I had to go home.”

“Did you sleep with him?”

Dicta melodramatically widened her eyes and gave Louise a shocked, offended look with her groggy eyes.

“You have no right to ask me that. He thinks I have a lot of potential.” Again Dicta had trouble speaking clearly. “He says I could make it as far as Lykke May or Louise P.”

“Did he do anything to you against your will?” Louise asked when Dicta didn’t respond to her question.

“What do you mean?” Dicta asked, seeming sincerely not to understand.

“Did he force you to do anything you didn’t feel comfortable with?” Louise really couldn’t put it anymore clearly than that.

Dicta closed her eyes and hid her face in her hands as she shook her head. After a while, she moved her hands again and gave Louise a dark look. “You’re like my mother. Why don’t you believe that amazing things can really happen?”

Louise was about to defend herself, but saw how tired and wretched Dicta looked. “Of course they can really happen. I just want to make sure that he didn’t take advantage of you. You’re a little off balance these days after what happened to your friend. That can make it harder to make good decisions.”

“He didn’t. He just thought I was pretty, and he really wanted to help me. We kissed a little. Okay?”

She added the last part out of spite and Louise couldn’t tell if that covered everything that had happened. But she wasn’t actually all that concerned as long as the girl hadn’t been molested on top of being marinated in a large portion of champagne.

Louise stood up and supported Dicta under her arm and helped her up.

“I’ll drive you home.”

Dicta stood there unstably on her feet and looked as if she wanted to protest, but Louise started pulling her along right away.

It was dark in the big house when Louise parked outside, but by the time she reached the front door Charlie had already started barking loudly and several lights along the driveway switched on. She rang the bell and supported Dicta while they waited for the door to open.

“No one’s home,” Dicta said after they’d waited a while.

Louise looked at her in surprise.

“Then why are we standing here waiting for someone to open the door?” Louise asked, helping Dicta as the girl tried to extract her keys from the little chest pocket of her jeans jacket.

At first the girl didn’t answer, then she shrugged and laughed a little foolishly. “I forgot it was the weekend,” she said, getting the door open without letting the dog out. “My mom spends most of her weekends at dog shows or agility courses, and my dad goes along. Otherwise they’d never see each other.”

She spat that last sentence out and had obviously heard the explanation repeated so many times that it had become a kind of mantra. Louise had the sense that it was more that Dicta didn’t care about her parents’ priorities, not that they upset her. Louise stood there in the front door watching the girl slip off her jacket and toss it on the floor. Once she had ascertained that Dicta was heading for her bedroom she yelled good night and shut the door to drive back to the hotel.

19

“W
HAT ARE WE DOING ABOUT THOSE TIRES
?” S
TORM ASKED
, irritated, looking at Skipper and Dean.

It had been more than two weeks since Samra had been found, and the whole group was sitting around the table in the command room. So far they hadn’t gotten anything out of the crime-scene investigations or the dinghies that were out there, the search of the al-Abds’ home, or the string of witness statements that Louise and Mik had spent the intervening weeks on along with Bengtsen and Velin. They’d trawled through everything—acquaintances, work relationships, family, neighbors. Storm had even considered whether he ought to have Interpol send one of them to Jordan to speak to family members there, but it would have a big impact on the investigation if that kind of questioning was to be permitted and he still hadn’t found a way to justify it.

Skipper reached for a little stack of papers he had on the table in front of him.