16
“I COULD TELL THIS GUY WAS DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS. Christina didn’t talk about anything else after her first date with him.”
Marianne With was sitting on the very edge of her chair. Christina Lerche’s friend had twisted up her dark her and secured it to the top of her head with a clip. She had a nice complexion and wasn’t wearing any makeup. She was thirty-three, just like Christina, and they had worked together for four years.
“She really enjoyed herself. She was a happy person. I envied her that.”
Marianne seemed to slump, staring off into space and receding into her own thoughts before she continued. “But she was also the kind of person you could easily think was sort of overdoing it. She was totally obsessed with online dating. She had profiles on God knows how many different dating sites, and she never made any secret of it. She sometimes went out with several guys in the same week, although she rarely went on more than one or two dates with the same guy. It was as though that first meeting was the only part that interested her. After that she’d toss them aside, discard them, and the next day she’d be at it again with someone new.”
Louise observed the dark-haired woman as she spoke. There was no doubt that Marianne did not approve of her friend’s behavior, but at the same time Louise detected a touch of envy in her voice. Christina’s behavior, at least the way Marianne was describing it, was not unusual, though. A little while back, the division had held a Friday continuing-education meeting where a Swedish lifestyle researcher gave a talk about the increasing number of people who were becoming addicted to online dating.
“But it wasn’t like that with this guy,” Marianne continued.
The vaguely disapproving tone was gone from her voice. Now she just sounded sincere, and sad.
“I think he charmed her with his chivalry. The way she told it, she made it sound almost like some heroic deed that he had walked her back to the subway.”
Marianne slumped again. She sat staring at the floor before straightening up and saying, “Sometimes I thought she deserved a good slap on the wrist.”
Her voice started sounding choked up, and Louise braced herself for a bout of sobbing.
“She would get all irritated whenever a bouquet of flowers would show up at the office from one of her rejects,” Marianne continued, her voice not breaking after all. “She lost interest so fast that the guys totally didn’t get that the relationship was over.” She paused briefly. “I really shouldn’t be talking about her like this,” she sniffled.
“What day did they see each other?” Louise asked, all her senses heightened, ignoring the witness’s self-reproach. Her question was so abrupt that Marianne looked at Louise in confusion.
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me when Christina went out with him,” Louise explained. “Where did they go, and when did he walk her back to the subway?”
“It must have been Monday or Tuesday.”
“Do you mean only three or four days went by between when they met for the first time and when he murdered her?”
Louise was champing at the bit, but trying not to push Marianne too hard so she wouldn’t freeze up.
“It felt like more time had passed,” Marianne said, “but it must have all happened the same week. We were at a training seminar the week before that. And they hadn’t met each other yet then. But she did say she’d been e-mailing a guy who sounded interesting. I’m quite sure now that it was Monday. They were supposed to get together after work in front of those quaint old pubs along the quay in Nyhavn.”
“Did they go out to eat?” Louise urged. “Or did they see a movie?” Louise searched her memory, trying to think of other things people might do on a first date.
“Uh-uh,” Marianne said. “That was one of the things Christina thought was so great about him. They just went somewhere and talked, and it seemed like she was impressed to meet a guy who was both well-read and gentlemanly at the same time. She told me about how they had chatted for a couple hours before he politely asked if he could take her out to dinner on Friday. After she said yes, that was when he walked her back to the subway.”
“So that was late afternoon or early evening?” Louise prodded.
Marianne nodded.
Louise wrapped up the interview, saying good-bye and thanking her for coming. Then she popped into Heilmann’s office.
“We have to review the subway’s security footage,” Louise said before she was even seated in the chair opposite Heilmann’s desk. Then she plopped down and gave Heilmann a quick summary of the interview with Christina’s friend.
“We’ll start by watching what the CCTV cameras recorded on the platforms at the Kongens Nytorv station, and then if they don’t show up there we can always try the cameras from the escalators leading down to the platforms.”
“Hell, yeah!” Heilmann interjected. She didn’t use words like that often, but she had been a little less formal ever since she’d returned from her leave of absence.
“First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll have to ask them to save all the subway CCTV surveillance footage for us,” Louise continued excitedly. “They keep the recordings for a week, and after that I think they record over them.”
Heilmann nodded.
“I’ll call the subway security office first thing in the morning.”
Louise smiled and sank back in her chair.
“Now we’ll get him,” she said and starting humming to herself.
“Lieutenant Suhr just went home to spend Sunday evening with his family,” Heilmann said. “But he prepped a press release for us to go public with tomorrow morning. We’re asking for witnesses who had contact with a man matching the description of our suspect. And women who experienced the same type of assault but didn’t report it. We’re also warning people about him. It’s just too dangerous not to.”
“If we find him on the surveillance tapes, we can put out an APB for him with a picture as early as Tuesday,” Louise said. “Actually, I could head over there right now. But do you think anyone would be there at this hour on a Sunday to pull the surveillance footage for me?”
They agreed that it made the most sense to review the tapes on-site, using whatever equipment the subway security folks used for that purpose. Otherwise, standard procedure was to copy the surveillance footage to DVDs that they could bring back to police headquarters and review there, but the transfer reduced the image quality.
Heilmann looked at her watch. It was almost seven.
“I doubt it. It’ll have to be the very first thing we do in the morning. You and Jørgensen can make an appointment with Metro Security right after the morning briefing.”
Louise went to find her partner. He was sitting with Toft, still working on Christina’s computer.
“We’re not going to get anywhere else with this until CCU looks at it,” Toft said. “We can tell that they were e-mailing each other for about fourteen days, but we need to trace the e-mails he sent her. Our application turns up a number of different ISPs, but we’re not getting anywhere beyond that. Besides, we’ll have to get a warrant before the four service providers will turn over the details on the IP addresses to us. That’ll take a couple of days.”
Toft sounded discouraged.
Louise smiled and patted him on the shoulder.
“Then it’s a good thing we’ve got another way to track this guy down.”
Toft pushed his reading glasses on top of his head and pulled his eyes away from the computer screen. He could already tell from the tone of her voice that she had something new.
“What’s up?” Toft asked. Lars didn’t react. He kept on scanning through the printouts of the e-mails that Christina and Jesper Bjergholdt had exchanged, and Louise figured he assumed she was referring to the condom they had found at the apartment.
“Tomorrow we’re going to go pick up a picture of him,” she told Lars. “And you’re coming with me.”
“‘Pick up’?” Lars and Toft exclaimed in unison.
“The same day our guy had dinner with Susanne Hansson in Tivoli, he also spent the afternoon with Christina Lerche drinking beer in Nyhavn. And then—wait for it—he walked her back to catch the subway at the Kongens Nytorv station and invited her to go out on Friday. We’re going to look through the station’s surveillance footage for Monday between 5 and 7 P.M. Her friend can’t remember what time this all happened, but we know when he was in Tivoli having dinner with Susanne, so it was probably sometime just before that.”
Both men sat listening attentively to what she was saying.
“It will be interesting to see whether he knew how to evade the cameras. It’s actually not that easy to do,” Toft said, who was the person in the division with the most camera surveillance experience.
“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Louise said, interrupting him in her sunniest voice. “He’s not untouchable; he showed us that in his last attack when he lost control, leaving his fingerprints on the wall and later being stupid enough to flush his used condom down the toilet. He thinks he’s in control, but he slips up now and then.”
They nodded, and she continued: “Now at least we’ve got a lead.”
Before heading back to her office to straighten up after her interview with Marianne With, Louise told Lars and Toft that she was on her way home, so if there was anything else that they needed from her, they should say so now.
“No, I think we’re all set,” Toft said. “We’re going to drop off the computer now, and then we’ll have to wait and see what the experts can get out of it.” She waved good-bye and hoped they had a good rest of their Sunday evening.
“Hello,” Louise called, opening her front door. She heard voices, and a moment later Markus came running in and gave her a hug. Camilla and Peter were sitting in the kitchen sharing a bottle of red wine. Their empty plates had already been cleared and were sitting on the counter, along with a pan. A large unwashed skillet was soaking in the sink.
“Well, bon appétit!” Louise mumbled under her breath. She quickly glanced around at the mess and suddenly felt tired. She went to the bathroom to freshen up a little. The autopsy, crime-scene inspection, and witness interview had all taken their toll.
“Have you eaten?” Peter called from the kitchen.
She had grabbed a piece of crispbread out of her desk drawer before Christina Lerche’s friend arrived, but otherwise she hadn’t had any real food since leaving her parents’ house that morning.
“Nope. Is there anything left?”
She walked over and peered down into the pan. In the bottom were a couple of uneaten boiled new potatoes. She grabbed a couple of slices of rye bread, buttered them heavily, cut the potatoes into slices, and seasoned everything with sea salt.
“Wine?” Peter offered. He was having a hard time hiding his irritation at their weekend having been cut short, but he was making an honest effort.
Louise shook her head to say “no, thanks” and stepped out onto the landing of the back stairs to grab one of the lukewarm cans of beer they kept out there. Only after she opened it did she realize that Camilla had been watching her without saying anything. She hadn’t even stood up to give her a hug hello. It gave her the creepy feeling that they had been sitting there talking about her and that maybe Peter was venting. She really just wanted to take her food into the living room and plop down in front of the TV, but that would not go over well and would probably be a little too antisocial, she thought.
With a forced smile, she took her beer and plate over to the round kitchen table and joined them. They had lit candles, and the bottle of wine was almost empty. They’ve been sitting here for a while, she thought. Markus was glued to Peter’s PlayStation in the bedroom, so they only heard the occasional cheer of triumph from him.
“Is something wrong?” Louise asked Camilla, wondering why she was being so quiet. “Did you have a good weekend?”
Finally her friend smiled.
“I had a really great weekend—thank you for watching Markus,” Camilla said.
“Oh stop, I wasn’t fishing for a thank-you,” Louise said. “You know how we love having him. So... pray tell. Who is he?”
Camilla blushed a little, which Louise noticed immediately. Camilla didn’t do that often.
“So, what kind of guy is he?” Louise said, trying to prod her along.
Peter stood up and started loading the dishes into the machine.
“His name is Henning—” Camilla started.
“Henning?” For the second time that day, Louise had spoken before she could stop herself. It was just such a dweeby name, she thought, and hastened to ask whether he had a last name as well.
“Yes, Henning Zachariassen. He’s got a daughter about Markus’s age who spends weekends with him.”
“Where did you meet him? Where does he live?” Louise asked.
“Okay, okay, easy now!” Camilla protested.
Peter turned toward them and explained. “Camilla’s been politely waiting for you to come home before giving us the scoop, so give her a chance.”
“All right, all right! Start from the beginning, then. I want to hear all the details... well, except for, you know, the intimate details,” Louise added quickly.
“I only just met him,” Camilla said.
The smile that Louise had put on to encourage her friend to start talking stuck, turning into a scowl she had trouble concealing. She gave up on taking another bite of her food, and instead set her fork down onto her plate.
“Does he have dark hair?” she asked, suddenly serious.
Camilla nodded dreamily and purred “Mmm” in a deep, mellifluous voice. She had always described her dream man as dark and a good deal taller than her own five-foot-seven.
“Did you meet him online?” Louise’s voice cut through the pleasant mood in the kitchen, stripped of any hint of encouragement or approval. Peter, who was washing the frying pan, dropped it into the sink with a bang and turned around in indignation.
“Would you give it a rest?!” Peter exclaimed. “Has it escaped your notice that the Internet is a completely normal way to meet someone?” he asked, looking at Louise accusingly.
Louise didn’t even deign to look at him, continuing, in her stern tone, “Do you have a picture of him?”
Camilla shook her head. The purr in her voice was now replaced with grumpy exasperation. “No, I don’t,” Camilla said. “What the fuck is wrong with you, anyway? Can’t you just be happy for me that I met a guy I want to be with?”
“Yes, of course,” Louise said, a tad defensively.
Peter gave up on washing the dishes and came back over to sit down.
“Under normal circumstances, I’d be thrilled for you—” Louise began, trying to clarify.
“But, what, in your mind the Internet isn’t a ‘normal circumstance’?” Camilla blurted out before Louise could finish. Louise held up both hands to try to calm the situation.
“That has nothing to do with it. I would be over the moon for you if I hadn’t just been watching the autopsy of... standing over the corpse of a woman just a couple years younger than you who invited a dark-haired man she met online home with her the night before...—well, I guess, Friday night...” Louise raised her hand again to keep Camilla from interrupting her, “and it just so happened that this dark-haired guy was in all likelihood the same guy who bound, gagged, and raped Susanne Hansson on Monday. Both of those women had one thing in common, and that was that they fell for him online. So you’ll have to just excuse me if I’m not gushing over with enthusiasm.”
Everyone was quiet. Louise no longer needed to fight to get a word in edgewise. “And when they wheeled the corpse into the autopsy room this morning,” she continued, “for a minute I fucking thought it was you lying on that table, Camilla! The victim even lived in Frederiksberg.”
“All right, that’s enough! I don’t want any more details,” Camilla burst out in fear.
Peter put his hand on the back of Louise’s neck and stroked her with his thumb.
Then Camilla’s horrified expression changed, her eyes revealing the steely glint of a journalist on the trail of a new story. Seeing this, Louise hastened to add that that was all she was going to say about the two cases.
“Lieutenant Suhr will be putting out a press release tomorrow,” Louise said. Camilla, in full crime-reporter mode, completely ignored this last comment.
“There are two victims? So, does that mean you’re hunting for a serial rapist?” she fished.
Louise nodded, but obstinately insisted that she would say no more.
“What time does Suhr come in to work in the morning?” Camilla asked.
“Just before the morning briefing at eight,” Louise replied.
“Fuck it—I’m going to call him tonight,” Camilla said, sounding enthusiastic.
The wistful, dreamy look was long gone from Camilla’s face. Now a professional spark had been lit. She had apparently moved her own love life to the back burner, faced with the prospect of a case that would undoubtedly fill the front pages of the newspapers in the coming days. She was about to stand up when Louise put a hand on her arm and asked her to sit back and tell them more about her date.
“What do you know about Henning?” Louise asked.
“I know plenty about him,” Camilla said, a tad defensively. “He’s good-looking and doesn’t seem very criminal. Even if you seem to think that.”
“I don’t think anything,” Louise said, tired. “All I know is that, at this very moment, a guy with a special knack for charming his way into the panties of women he meets online is ravaging the city. He’s brutal and calculating and a sadistic fuck. And to top it off, he’s sneaky. So far, he’s made sure we can’t even trace where he’s e-mailing from.”
“Well, then you can rule out Henning,” Camilla said triumphantly, drinking the last of her wine. “He writes me from his living room out in Sorø.”
“Sorø! Henning’s from Sorø? Really, Sorø?” Louise teased, smiling.
“What’s wrong with that? Have you ever even been there?” Camilla countered. Sorø was a sleepy lakeside bedroom community about an hour west of Copenhagen, not exactly the hip, urban neighborhood Louise would have expected Camilla to pick a man from.
“I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with Sorø,” Louise said. But now she was laughing. Peter shot her a look and she tried to stop, but small, shivering twitches in Peter’s cheeks revealed that even he was only just barely able to suppress his own chuckling.
“Maybe Henning walks around wearing white gym socks with Tevas, too,” Louise managed to say between guffaws. Her laughter released all the tension that had been building up in her gut since she walked into the kitchen, and now it washed over her, robbing her of any chance of regaining her composure.
Camilla slid her chair back over the kitchen floor in a huff. “I don’t have to listen to this! He fucking does not—and, anyway, so what if he did? A guy can still be hot even if he walks around wearing lame-ass gym socks.”
The last comment finally pushed Peter over the edge, and he dissolved into laughter as well.
It had always been Camilla’s mantra that she would rather “end up an old maid than fall in love with some hick who goes around in gym socks and Tevas.”
All the laughter and Camilla’s angry outburst brought Markus storming in. “What is going on in here?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” his mother said. “Louise and Peter are just goofing around.”
He lingered in the doorway, but eventually gave up and went back to his video game without finding out what he’d missed.
Louise grew serious again. “Not to be paranoid, but you actually have no way of knowing whether Henning is sitting at home in Sorø writing to you just because that’s what he claims he’s doing.”
“Why would he lie about that?” Camilla asked, more subdued. A small trace of uncertainty had crept into her voice, and she had apparently stopped taking Louise’s comments personally and was now listening instead of being defensive.
“I’m sure he probably wouldn’t. But our suspect had his victims—well, his first victim, at least,” Louise said, correcting herself, “convinced that he was sitting at home in his apartment, even though he was actually e-mailing from a public computer. So it’s hard to be sure. Was he at your place all Friday evening?”
Camilla was about to defend herself again, but relented and instead just said, “Yeah... until about eight o’clock. Then he said he had to meet someone.”
“Who?” Louise asked.
Camilla shrugged and admitted that she hadn’t asked. After all, it was just their first date.
“I know tons of great stories about people who met each other this way,” Camilla said after a moment’s silence. Peter got up and went back to doing the dishes.
“And I’ve only heard a couple of bad stories,” she continued, “and I’m sure there are only a tiny number that sink to the level you’re describing.”
“Obviously. I know that,” Louise said quickly and a tad defensively.
She also knew plenty of heartwarming stories with happy endings, and she actually did have a soft spot in her heart for single people who preferred writing to a potential boyfriend or girlfriend online as opposed to trawling the picked-over crowd that hangs out at the city’s bars weekend after weekend.
Mollified by Louise’s comment, Camilla conceded that there were obviously some con artists out there who were really living it up, doing whatever they wanted under identities that existed only in their imaginations.
“This one time, I wrote a piece about a girl who met a man who really ‘thought outside the box,’” Camilla said. “He convinced her that he was building a big hacienda in Spain. She lent him money several times because he claimed the banks in Spain couldn’t figure out how to transfer money from his Danish accounts. So she was happy to pay, believing that he was sending her money to the contractors in Spain so the swimming pool would be finished by the time they went down there on vacation.”
Camilla sighed, thinking about the woman.
“The relationship ended as soon as she realized that he didn’t even own a planter of flowers in front of a hacienda. Her money was gone, and so was he, the minute she closed her wallet.”
“Some people are just naïve,” Peter said to her from over by the kitchen sink.
Louise shook her head slightly. “It’s inevitable that misfits and psychopaths will be attracted to a venue like the Internet. The problem is just that it’s so fucking hard to spot them on a screen,” she philosophized.
“Well, if you’ve got such bad judgment, you have to hire a private eye!” Camilla said.
Louise interpreted her friend’s comment as a joke.
“No, seriously, some people really do that,” Camilla explained when she saw Louise’s smile. “There has been a big uptick lately in that kind of work at all the detective agencies.”
“Well, maybe just to be safe you should hire a detective to take a little look at Henning,” Louise suggested, knowing at the same time that that would spoil the pleasant, joking atmosphere they had managed to recapture.
“It’s not him. He’s a perfectly ordinary guy, definitely not a serial rapist,” Camilla said and then got up and went into the living room to tell Markus they were going. After a brief debate, he came back out with her and started putting on his shoes.
Louise had gotten up and was standing in the entry. Camilla stood in front of her and put her arms on Louise’s shoulders, shaking her slightly as Markus went out into the kitchen to say good-bye to Peter.
“Can’t you just give it a rest? Sometimes I get the feeling that you don’t want me to be happy.”
That stung. Camilla might not have meant it that way, but it felt like her friend had just kicked her in the stomach. She pulled herself together and then wrapped her arms around Camilla and pulled her close.
“There’s nothing I want more. I’m just saying you should be careful.”
“You think I’ve got crappy judgment,” Camilla said, her voice now a whisper.
“That’s not what I meant,” Louise protested. “I’m sorry. I just don’t feel like getting called out to your apartment and finding your arms and legs tied behind you. But I guess enough is enough. Even I can tell that I’m being too much of a busybody.”
After they said good-bye, Louise lingered in the doorway, watching them go down the stairs. Her body felt heavy and her mind felt groggy after what Camilla had said. She shut the door and went into the kitchen to help with the last of the cleaning.
Do I really not want her to be happy? she wondered. Of course that wasn’t true, but sometimes Camilla plunged into things without thinking them through, and that’s what worried her.
She started the dishwasher and headed to the bathroom to brush her teeth.
According to the statistics, Camilla wasn’t an obvious rape victim, according to this lunatic’s perceived “type.” But Christina Lerche hadn’t been one, either, which just meant that their initial theory that the suspect targeted quiet, insecure women who dreamed of a man and a stable, secure relationship had already been shot down.
Peter sat down in front of the TV to watch a movie that sounded like it was well under way. Louise went into the bedroom to put on her pajamas. It struck her that she actually did not know what Camilla had written in her profile. Maybe she just said that she’d lived alone with her son for years, and that she longed for someone to share her life with. Maybe the take-charge, independent, urban side of Camilla—a woman who wouldn’t dream of putting her precious feet into shoes that cost less than several hundred dollars—was hard to spot through whatever wishes and desires she expressed when looking for a life partner. Louise had no idea, and it really wasn’t any of her business, either. Of course she wanted Camilla to be happy, even if it meant dating someone from Sorø.
She returned to the living room and flopped down onto the couch with Peter, pulling the afghan over her.
“What movie is this? What have I missed?”
Since he had been watching for only ten minutes himself, Peter’s summary was somewhat vague, so she gave up on following the movie and closed her eyes instead.