Call Me Princess Part 24

"Is Camilla out there?" Jrgen asked, looking at her inquiringly.

"I don't know," Louise replied with a shrug. She hoped she wasn't.

He walked over slowly and stood in front of her. "I'll do it because you promised you would help me. And because I've decided that I would really like to get to know you."

She shuddered. Whoa, does he really not get that's not an option anymore? she wondered. It struck her with even more clarity that he did not consider his a.s.saults crimes. He was not picturing the charges the police would file against him later that night. He is completely f.u.c.ked up, and then some. He's a textbook sociopath! ran through her mind.

"Why did you come see Susanne today?" Louise asked as Jrgen began pus.h.i.+ng her toward the door.

"She wrote in the paper that I'd killed someone. That's not true. She knows me and knows I'm not like that."

Louise sank. There was no way she could look him in the eye.

"You know, not all girls find it normal to be bound and gagged. It could easily seem frightening if that wasn't something you'd agreed on beforehand...."

She stopped talking because his face seemed to shut down.

They were at the door.

"Wait a minute," she said as calmly as she could. "I'll call them and tell them we're coming out."

He watched her while she dialed and relayed a brief message to Suhr. Fear had taken hold of him, and there was nothing ferocious left in his eyes-just nervousness. His eyes wandered. He gripped her arm, ready to push her out in front of him when they opened the door.

"When you open the door, we'll walk slowly down the path through the front yard," she said urgently, worried that he might not understand what would happen if he moved too quickly.

He pushed the handle and opened the door. Suhr was standing at the end of the path, staring at them but not doing anything.

They took their first steps very slowly, like an animal cautiously moving into unfamiliar territory. Jrgen pushed her ahead of himself like a s.h.i.+eld; once they'd made it a couple of steps beyond the front door, he suddenly stopped, taking in the whole scene. There were sharpshooters on several rooftops, aiming at him. Officers in tactical gear formed a ring all the way around the perimeter of the building. To Louise, the crowd of people loomed as an inscrutable mob, but it seemed as though he was memorizing the details.

With a violent shove, he pushed her farther ahead. The motion was so brutal that Louise had the sense that he had planned to dart back into the house and stand his ground, but had decided that he probably wouldn't be able to pull her back with him. She saw Suhr subtly shake his head with his eyes locked on something behind her, either urging Jrgen not to do anything stupid so they could get this over with, or maybe it was a signal to a marksman who was probably up on the roof behind her.

Suhr started walking toward them. Behind him, the officers who would make the arrest were ready. Louise made eye contact with Lars and recognized a couple of the people who she knew were part of the negotiating team. They had withdrawn to the side and were standing in the neighbor's front yard, watching everything play out without their help.

Louise stopped and let Jrgen walk past her. He didn't condescend to look at her as he slowly walked toward Suhr, but as he pa.s.sed her he said, very softly, "I trust you."

She watched him as the tactical teams and officers in bulletproof vests swooped in to handcuff, search, and arrest him. She watched them walk over to the parked cars, where four men climbed in to sit with him in the back of a dark blue van. Louise vaguely registered Suhr walking over and standing next to her, and heard him ask if she was okay.

She shook her head and discovered that her legs were shaking underneath her. She noticed how the strength started seeping out of her body. She wasn't okay at all, she thought.

The crime-scene investigators prepared to enter the apartment. It hit her that she didn't know what had happened to Susanne, but that would have to wait.

It took a little while before she noticed the photographers' flashbulbs aimed at her as well as Jrgen. Frightened, she turned around so her back was to them.

Lars came over, put his arm around her, and pulled her away. "Come on," he said, supporting her as they started walking over to the car. She saw Nymand, Roskilde's chief of police, approaching with his hand outstretched and a big smile. She looked the other way and picked up her pace.

Her partner opened the door and helped her in. Her muscles weren't obeying, her legs were trembling, and her hands were restless.

"Do you think he was planning to rape her again? He had tied her hands," Lars said as they drove back down Kbenhavnsvej toward the highway. "Or did he come to kill her? Also, the uniforms they sent out confirmed that he had not gone to see Karin Hvenegaard."

Louise shook her head, trying to pull herself together. Mostly she just wanted not to think about it for a little while, but she could certainly understand that he was interested. He had been standing right outside, after all.

"He didn't come to kill her," she said. Talking about it made her feel like she'd overcome something. "He came to convince her that he hadn't killed Christina Lerche. To tell her that Christina had still been alive when he left her."

Lars nodded and proceeded to say what Louise herself had already thought. "Jrgen knew Susanne could identify him and that eyewitness testimony would be important at trial."

Louise explained Jrgen's reaction to Susanne's diary that the paper had published. "He felt like she was being unfair to him, blaming him for something he didn't do."

Lars glanced over at her quickly before picking up speed and moving into the pa.s.sing lane on the highway. "What was he thinking?" he said. "Who goes on dates with a little kit full of paraphernalia for raping women?"

"I'm guessing that he would readily admit he has sadomaso-chistic tendencies and that he thinks that's just fine.... Which, I mean, I suppose it is, legally," Louise hurried to add, "if your partner is into that, too."

Lars moved back into the middle lane, lowered his speed a little, and listened.

"That just wasn't the case here," Louise continued. "I'm sure they probably agreed to have s.e.x, but I don't think they talked about what kind of s.e.x and when they would stop. At least Susanne didn't mention anything like that. Quite to the contrary, she had a very strong response when I asked her if she was into that kind of thing-if it turned her on to be tied up, beat up, and raped. I just can't believe that was something they'd discussed in advance, nor that the answer would have ever been yes."

Lars sat shaking his head as Louise spoke, and then said, "Hey, do you remember that case from a few years ago? The one where the upstairs neighbor arranged to have the woman who lived downstairs from him raped?"

Louise shook her head, not remembering the case Lars was referring to.

"The guy went online, claiming to be his downstairs neighbor, and he got in touch with a young guy he invited over to act out a rape fantasy. He pretended to be his downstairs neighbor, and he wrote that she would leave the door to the apartment unlocked for him when she went to bed. So he could just let himself in. And that he should keep going, even if she screamed, so it would be as realistic as possible."

Louise was beginning to remember the case. She definitely remembered reading about it, and for the first time feeling, in dead earnest, that she wanted to see the b.a.l.l.s cut off a guy. What that upstairs neighbor had done was so beyond the pale, but his punishment had seemed negligible.

"He had the keys because he'd once watered her plants while she was away on vacation. So he just stopped by a hardware store and had copies made," Louise added. "And the whole thing scared the s.h.i.+t out of that young guy."

"Yeah, he wasn't all that bright, was he," said Lars. "And the upstairs neighbor was convicted."

"Sick f.u.c.k," Louise said.

Reminiscing about old cases perked her up a little bit. Even though it had been a relatively brief case, she remembered it because the perp had thought the whole thing up with such malice.

Lars said, "This guy today, Jrgen, he's pretty f.u.c.ked up, too. What was he like?"

"Basically calm and quiet," Louise replied. "It seemed like he didn't actually get it that he had committed a bunch of s.e.xual a.s.saults. He just feels misunderstood." Louise thought about it for a bit before continuing. "I'm having a little trouble figuring out how calculating he was. It really didn't seem like he was trying to hide. And that also fits with how it seemed more coincidental than planned that the subway security cameras didn't get a good shot of him. On the other hand, he was extremely meticulous about covering his tracks when he e-mailed the women, and he was careful not to leave fingerprints in their apartments."

"It seems illogical," Lars said, puzzled.

"Yeah," Louise nodded in agreement. Then a wave of guilt washed over her. "I just promised him one thing after another," she said. "Everything you can think of."

Lars didn't even glance over at her, just nodded and said, "Of course you did."

"We're all prost.i.tutes before the Lord," she whispered to herself, tilting her seat back and leaning her body back into a position that helped her tensed muscles relax. "I would have promised him anything to get him to walk out of there."

"That's part of the job, and you did great," he said, giving her knee a squeeze. Then he admitted that Suhr had been tenser than usual while she'd been inside.

"But of course he was exceptionally pleased when Susanne came out," Lars hurried to add when he heard Louise sigh. "And I'm guessing there won't be a dry eye left when the papers print the pictures of him leading her away from the scene as her savior." Lars laughed a little before becoming serious again. "I've never seen him so quiet and desperate. He looked like he was holding his breath the whole time you were in there."

She didn't know what to think. It would certainly be understandable if he was angry that she'd acted without consulting him and deprived him of the opportunity to lead the charge.

"Should I take you straight home?" Lars asked.

She really wanted to take him up on the offer, but somewhere in the back of her head she could hear Jakobsen lecturing about how it was important for people to properly wrap up experiences like these so they didn't ossify.

"Camilla's dating his brother," Louise suddenly blurted out. She closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to see her partner's reaction, but she heard his outburst.

"What did you say?" he spluttered.

What a stupid thing to say, Louise thought. He'd heard her. But she could certainly understand his sentiment.

She was still squeezing her eyes shut. She described her meeting in Tivoli to Lars.

"At first I thought it was him. I recognized the silhouette. Turns out Henning is his older brother."

Lars had met Henning at the party out in Holmen, so he actually knew him better than she did, she thought, her body suddenly feeling heavy. Louise couldn't see how she'd ever be able to talk to Camilla about what had happened. Mostly she just wanted to dive down into the deep, inky darkness and not come back out until all the problems had been resolved and things were quiet up at the surface again. Right now, everything felt chaotic.

Lars was quiet for a while.

"Well, that sucks," he finally said. "For both of them."

31.

LOUISE AND LARS WERE THE FIRST ONES BACK FROM ROSKILDE, but the rumors had already reached the division. Willumsen came and stood in the doorway to their office, where he proceeded to stare unabashedly at Louise. She noticed him there, but couldn't face listening to his blunt criticism about how she'd been rash and impetuous by entering the apartment. She made a point of continuing to stare straight ahead.

"We have an elite team of highly trained people who handle situations like this one in Roskilde," Willumsen began, once the silence in the room started to grow awkward.

Louise wasn't listening. Or pretended that she wasn't.

"And I wasn't planning on adding anyone else to that team," Willumsen continued.

He was speaking directly at her, even though Lars was sitting at his desk directly across from Louise too. The mood was gloomy, and she sensed that her partner was having trouble deciding whether he ought to leave the office so he wouldn't have to witness the imminent dressing-down, or whether he ought to stay and support her.

"I actually just said no to training any more folks from our division," Willumsen proceeded. "But it's dangerous to have people like you walking around, so maybe that was a mistake?"

Finally Louise turned in her chair and looked at him. Her anger was beginning to surface. She had had just about enough. Just being here at the office instead of home in her bed was demanding a huge effort.

"I did what I could," she seethed in self-defense. "There was no time stand around outside and wait for backup. And it turned out fine."

Willumsen actually looked a little hurt by her a.s.sertive outburst.

"Lucky for you," he said before she managed to blitz him with her pent-up, stereotypical feelings that had been just under the surface. Then he continued, "I should have signed you up. You're cut out for it...."

Slowly it started to dawn on her what he meant, but of course he couldn't just say it straight out. That would have been too simple and unlike him, Louise thought, turning to face him and listening with interest.

"They're going to be training a new team," Willumsen said. "And as I said, we originally told them we weren't going to send anyone, but in light of today's events I think the situation has changed."

Louise felt a lump in her throat and realized how seriously unhinged she was. "Thanks," she said.

Just then, Toft and Stig came down the hallway and around the corner into her office. They ignored Willumsen and Lars and walked right up to her. Stig squatted down next to her chair while Toft sat down on her desk. They gave her looks that were so full of concern that she smiled.

"What is it?" she asked, looking from the one to the other. "I'm fine. It's done. It went well."

On the way back to headquarters in the car, Lars had said that Stig had offered several times to go into the apartment and get her out, but Suhr had refused, snarling that he was more than satisfied to have Rick in there.

"What was he like?" Stig asked, succ.u.mbing to his curiosity.

Louise shook her head. "He was actually really calm," she said, surprised that she didn't have anything more harrowing to tell him. Maybe she had a mental wall up, obscuring the fact that she had been face to face with a man who had committed a series of brutal rapes. She didn't feel any sympathy for him, and yet she had a hard time describing him as the calculating, cynical person they had been searching for.

It struck her again that Camilla might have been sitting around regaling Jrgen with tales of his own case when they were socializing together, without any sense of how catastrophic that could have been. He could have learned something from Camilla that triggered his response. But desperate? Based on her experience with him in the apartment, he really hadn't seemed desperate to her.

"He didn't make any demands," Louise said, "but I promised him a ton of things I'll never be able to make good on."

Suddenly she wished they would all just leave. She was tired, and her thoughts were whirling around in her head.

"Do you have someone who can come over and be with you when you leave here?" Willumsen asked genially.

Louise smiled. Willumsen rarely let the friendly side of his personality show, so she knew she ought to enjoy this rare glimpse.

Just then Heilmann walked in the door. "I can go with you," she offered.

Louise shook her head firmly. "I'm fine," she insisted. "I'd like to be alone."

"Be sensible, would-" Heilmann stopped as the sound of heels came clicking down the hallway. Everyone in the office turned to look at the doorway, where Camilla abruptly stopped and looked around with a questioning look, wondering if it was all right to interrupt them.

"Come on in," Heilmann said.

Toft and Stig had gotten up and moved over toward the door, as if they were afraid of being trapped in a room where things were about to get a little too intimate. Willumsen greeted Camilla briefly and then followed on Toft and Stig's heels. Willumsen had just gotten an extension on the pretrial detention of the immigrant woman's brother, so his group was between cases. Louise guessed he was still itching to charge the upstairs neighbor for perjuring herself during her deposition because she'd made up that story about hearing noise in the apartment at one o'clock, but no one really believed the charges would stick. All the same, most people agreed it would be fitting revenge on a person who had interfered with the police investigation so much they had been forced to let their suspect go. Of course, now he was dead-but still!

"What the f.u.c.k just happened down there in Roskilde?" Camilla asked, concerned, but unable to hide the curiosity in her voice.

She tossed her big shoulder bag into the corner and took her seat on the low bookshelf next to the door, as though she felt quite at home in Lars and Louise's office. "I was hoping to find Lieutenant Suhr here," she said, looking at Heilmann.

Louise was guessing Suhr had already lined up the public defender so they could start questioning Jrgen that same night.

"Did something happen with Susanne?" Camilla asked with urgency.

Louise looked at her friend and tried to deduce how much she knew about the specific details of the story, because she had no doubt that Camilla was here in a professional capacity.

"No," Heilmann responded, "nothing too serious, but of course she is rather shaken up."

Camilla nodded, seeming very concerned. "I was just with her. He must have arrived right after I left." She said that last bit mostly to herself.