Farewell to Freedom (37 page)

Her thoughts slid back to that day at Police Headquarters and all his rubbish about how Pavlína had become his girlfriend. Maybe she was, but she was certainly back out on the street all the same.

“What about the questioning session?” Louise asked, turning off the car's engine when the heat had become too much.

“We're tapping the numbers MiloÅ¡ gave you, both the cell phone and the land line, but there hasn't been much so far, only three calls. Either nothing is happening, or he has another phone that we don't know about.”

That sounded most likely, Louise thought, fascinated by a young guy with a bandanna wrapped around his head that was almost black, it was so dirty. He was staggering his way toward the front door of a building with his key out in front of him, as if he were on horseback, jousting, holding a lance in his hand. A big black dog with an equally dirty bandanna around its neck was trotting along behind him.

“Mikkelsen and his people rounded up a bunch of the women who work for Arian and Hamdi last night. They caught them with their pants down, literally, and none of them had their prostitution paperwork in order, so they were slapped with the 500-kroner fine and, as Mikkelsen put it, the admonition not to let it happen again. Oddly enough, not one of them knew anything about the two Albanians. But Mikkelsen is making plans to wake them all up early tomorrow and drag them to the downtown station. Then they'll put them through their paces again and hope that something comes of it.”

Louise heard a quick laugh before Willumsen rounded off the conversation by saying that their colleagues from Halmtorvet had also learned that the Albanians were now meeting their girls at a pizza place on Istedgade to collect their money.

“You'll be relieved by someone from the downtown precinct around eight, then you'll be on again tomorrow.”

Louise nodded toward the windshield, where the bandanna-wearing pair had finally managed to make it in the door.

52

T
HE FOAM WAS THICK AND DENSE ON THE TOP OF THE
C
ZECH
pilsner that had just been set on the table in front of Camilla. Svejk just wasn't the same since the ban on indoor smoking had gone into effect for all pubs over forty square meters. It was certainly easier to breathe inside, but a little bit of the pub atmosphere that she otherwise so enjoyed had been lost. Two musicians were setting up, but otherwise there was only one other couple in the bar. She looked at her watch. There were two hours until the music started, it was only just after 8:00. She'd spent most of her day lying on her sofa, staring up into space.

Her boss had called and left a couple of messages, but she'd just listened as he asked how she was doing. She couldn't even muster the wherewithal to pick up the receiver and get the conversation over with, but she was prepared for the fact that he would try again.

The psychologist from National Hospital had also called and left a message that he'd had a cancellation for Monday, which he would hold open for her. If he didn't hear otherwise, he would plan to see her at 10:15. She'd written it down on a slip of paper and stuck it on the refrigerator door, but at the moment Monday felt far in the future because she still had her hands full getting by one day at a time.

Markus was at Jonas's place and she didn't need to pick him up until tomorrow morning, so Camilla had called and asked Louise if she wanted to get a beer when she got off work.

She looked up as Louise walked in the door and greeted the owner, who was manning the bar, before she headed for the table in the back of the room where Camilla was sitting. It would be the quietest corner once people started arriving. On the other hand, the odor from the urinal cakes in the men's bathroom saturated the air.

Camilla asked for another beer when Louise ordered and ignored the look aimed at her half-empty glass.

“Light or dark?” the waiter asked.

“A tall light,” she said.

“Henrik and Alice didn't have a child while they were at the camp,” Camilla began without any sort of lead-in, once the beers arrived at their table.

Camilla didn't elaborate until she saw the confused look on Louise's face. Then she explained that she'd called and talked to a woman at the Red Cross who'd lived with them at the refugee camp in Bosnia.

“She was positive that Alice Holm was not pregnant and did not have a newborn during that period,” Camilla explained, adding that the woman had even lived in the same barracks with them. But the woman had thought there was something about Alice getting sick at one point.

Camilla was a little irritated when Louise wasn't really paying attention. She knew the police had new clues in their quest for the culprit behind the two murders, but she was totally preoccupied with the information Elsa Lynge had provided. She was feeling more and more certain that there was a connection between that dead baby in the church and the pastor's own son.

“There's something wrong. Something he doesn't want to say.”

Louise raised one eyebrow, and Camilla was distracted for a second by a group of people who had just walked in and sat down at a table close to the bar. They looked like they were in their forties and could easily be co-workers closing out their week with a night on the town.

Camilla turned back to Louise and looked at her earnestly, raising her voice a little to make herself heard over the music.

“They didn't have a child. Not one on the way and not one in their arms during the period of time when he claims his wife gave birth to Jonas. They left the camp at the end of the summer in 1998, and according to him his son was almost one when they returned home in August.”

Camilla nudged her beer aside and leaned in over the table.

“I called the Office of Civil Registration,” Camilla said. “But of course they can't pass on confidential personal information to unauthorized civilians.”

Louise shook her head, but Camilla could tell that she finally had Louise's full attention.

“What was that about Alice Holm getting sick and them leaving the camp?”

Camilla shrugged.

“That was obviously the excuse they gave when they cut their stay in the camp short. But Henrik hasn't mentioned that his wife got sick and they had to go home early.”

“Maybe they just switched camps. That's possible, right? Maybe your source just got something mixed up?” Louise suggested.

“No. I read some of the articles Henrik wrote while they were there, and they clearly state that he was in Srebrenica the whole time. But I haven't asked him directly. He just talked about their great joy when they discovered that his wife was pregnant, even though they had started to think they might never get pregnant. I mean, that didn't exactly make me start to have doubts about the case.”

“Of course not,” Louise said.

“But it's not true, and I have a theory about how it all might fit together.”

“OUT!” they suddenly heard someone shout from by the bar. It was the owner, yelling so loudly the glasses were clinking. “THAT'S IT. YOU'RE OUT OF HERE!”

Camilla and Louise smiled at each other and turned to look at a dark-haired, heavy-set woman from a big group of people who were standing by the bar. The woman had a frightened expression and was trying to appease the owner.

“Shooby Dooby Doo Wop,”
Camilla suggested, and Louise nodded.

Anyone who knew the least thing about Svejk knew that you would be kicked out immediately if you were dumb enough to request
Shooby Dooby Doo-Wop
. If the woman had wanted to hear something by Herbert Grünemeier, by contrast, she would have received an appreciative nod, but there was no way she could have known that. Now it appeared that she was mercifully being allowed to stay if she behaved properly.

Suddenly Camilla laughed and shook her head at the bartender's quirks. That was exactly what she loved about this place. It was so liberatingly chic, and the owner did whatever he felt like.

“You should go in and see what the civil registry says,” Camilla said once the patrons had settled down again.

Louise appeared to be thinking, but she didn't protest as Camilla had feared she would.

“My guess is,” Camilla said, leaning even further forward, “that they adopted Jonas right after they returned home from Bosnia, and for some reason or other they didn't want to admit that they're not his biological parents, and therefore they put together this story that he was born while they were away.”

“But why?” asked Louise, her eyes fixed on Camilla. “Why would the pastor and his wife come up with a story like that?”

Camilla shrugged. She looked around the room, which had really filled up.

“I don't know,” she admitted, feeling the wind slowly starting to go out of her sails. She wanted to go home and go to bed.

“I'll check him the registry,” Louise promised when they were standing out on the sidewalk unlocking their bikes. “Don't let it go to your head if I let you read over my shoulder, because it's still confidential personal information. But obviously I'll let you take a peek.…”

“Say no more,” Camilla stopped her tiredly.

Whenever they got involved in each other's professional lives, they always had some iteration of this conversation. It would never end.

“As long as you find out if this has some connection to Jonas. I'm afraid for him. I couldn't bear it if something happened to him. Or Henrik Holm for that matter,” Camilla added, and flipped on the headlight she had strapped to her handlebars.

53

C
AMILLA FOUND THE BOYS AT THE BIG DINING TABLE IN THE KITCHEN
when she arrived at the pastor's home the next morning. They were sitting across from each other in total silence, each with a plate in front of him and a cup containing cocoa that had once been hot.

The bread basket was full of fresh morning rolls, but it looked like they'd hardly touched it. Suddenly she noticed how quiet it was in the house. There were no voices, no footsteps, and she could tell from looking at the boys that they'd been sitting at the table for a long time in this oppressive silence.

Earlier that morning, Louise had called and woken her. She was calling from Police Headquarters, where she was going to assist Toft in questioning Arian and Hamdi, but had just looked Henrik Holm up in the civil registry. When she sank back into her bed after their conversation, Camilla had a hard time defining whether she was filled by relief or disappointment.

According to the information in the database, Alice Holm had given birth to a son at the hospital in Sarajevo on June 14, 1997, while the couple was stationed in Bosnia. There was a birth certificate from the hospital to document it. It also said that they returned to Denmark in August of that same year, just as the pastor had said, and shortly thereafter, once all the documents had been approved, the Danish civil registry recognized Jonas Holm as a Danish citizen and issued him a personal identification number.

It took Camilla rather a long time to make it out of bed after that call, because once the information sank in, she realized that it was mostly for her own sake that she had been hoping the explanation lay somewhere in the past.

However egocentric it was, it really just came down to the fact that she needed an explanation in order to move on. An explanation that gave some sense to everything that had happened, even though it was far from clear that she had the mental capacity to understand it.

While she'd been lying in bed with her arms under her head staring at the ceiling, she'd felt profoundly grateful that she hadn't voiced her suspicions to the pastor. She could easily have had doubts and started opening up old wounds pertaining to his dearly departed wife, because as soon as she'd had her chat with Elsa Lynge, she'd wanted to confront him with what his former colleague had said, and she hadn't been concerned with whether Elsa might have been wrong or not.

“Did you guys have an argument?” Camilla exclaimed, helping herself to a poppyseed bun out of the basket. “What did you do to your dad and the housekeeper?”

She was watching Jonas, and when he slowly looked up, she immediately dropped the chipper tone and set down the bun before leaning over and putting her hand on his arm.

“What happened?” she asked, worried, casting a quick glance at her son, who she had an easier time reading.

“Where's your dad?” she repeated.

“Over in the church,” Jonas finally said, turning his face toward her.

She suddenly felt afraid and wasn't able to hide it so the boys wouldn't notice.

“And Tereza. Did something happen?”

Her voice was higher pitched now and sharper than it should have been, and Jonas pulled his arm back.

“They had an argument,” Jonas said so softly that she almost couldn't hear him. “Dad got really mad.”

“And then he threw her out,” Markus continued, “and then he got all her things and threw them out after her.…”

Markus stopped abruptly when his friend quietly started sniffling.

“Why were they arguing?” Camilla asked, not really knowing if she ought to put her arm around Jonas or if he would rather be left alone.

Both boys shrugged, but neither of them said anything.

“Is he still over there?” Camilla asked as she got up, heading for the kitchen door.

They both nodded.

“Well, then, I think I'm just going to go over there and talk to him. Meanwhile, you guys go back up and play,” she suggested.

They both got up right away and disappeared up the stairs.

54

A
T FIRST SHE COULDN
'
T SEE HIM
,
BUT SHE HEARD THE QUIET SOBS
. When she walked up toward the altar, she spotted him in the front pew, where he was sitting with his face hidden in his hands. His shoulders were moving softly in time to the rhythm of his sobs.