Part 5 (2/2)

If he thought a fifteen-year-old girl was too young to have a boyfriend, then he also probably thought the girl was too young to marry off, thought Louise, making it fairly unlikely that it was an ”honor” killing triggered by a conflict in that area.

Louise excused herself for a moment and went to ask one of her colleagues to check on whether there were any past reports of violence in the family. But when she entered the command center, Ruth Lange had already foreseen Louise's request and had a printout of the information ready for her.

”We've got one report against the father for domestic violence. His wife filed it a year and a half ago. Apparently he beat both her and her daughter, and subsequently the wife stayed at a women's shelter in Nykobing Sjaelland. Other than that, we don't have anything on him or the elder brother. The father came to Denmark in 1998, while the rest of the family did not arrive until 2002. At that point, the youngest hadn't been born yet, and the little sister was still an infant. They come from a town fifty miles south of Amman, Jordan, called Rabba. Since early 2001 he has been working at Stark, a lumberyard down by the harbor,” said Ruth.

Louise hurried back to her office and sat down quietly so she wouldn't interrupt the interview.

”Do you have a picture of her?” Mik asked.

Samra's father gently pulled a photo out of his jacket pocket. He set it on the table. It must have been taken on Midsummer's Eve; Samra was wearing a light-colored summer dress and you could see the bonfire in the background. Her long, dark hair fell onto her shoulders, and she was holding her little sister's hand. Both of them were smiling widely for the photographer. It struck Louise that she actually hadn't known whether Samra wore a headscarf, but apparently she hadn't.

”Is she the one you found?”

Louise glanced quickly at Mik, who nodded to her, and she turned to the father and said she was deeply sorry to have to tell him that it was his daughter whom a fisherman had found in the water out by Honsehalsen in Udby Cove.

All the color drained out of his face. His shoulders slumped, and a moment later tears burst from his eyes, and a long screeching sound was pulled up and out of him from somewhere deep within. As the sound made its way out into the room, the girl's father rose with a jerk and started to pace back and forth in tears as he cried in shock that it couldn't be true. The words were ripped into pieces by a stream of Arabic they didn't understand, but there was no mistaking the despair in them.

Louise approached cautiously, pulled him back toward the chair, and tried to get him to calm down.

”My little girl,” he repeated between deep sobs, sitting with his face hidden in his hands.

The air in the office was heavy with misery and grief. Finally Ibrahim calmed down a little.

Mik turned the MP3 recorder back on and made an attempt to get the interview going again.

”We need to talk more with you about your daughter's disappearance.”

The father looked at them with a distant gaze and tear-laden eyes.

”How did it happen?” he asked, his face still preoccupied.

”We don't know quite yet,” Mik said, making no mention of the rope and concrete.

”Could you please repeat for us when you and your wife last saw Samra?” Louise asked, turning the conversation in another direction.

”Tuesday night, when my wife said good night to her at eight-thirty.”

”Yesterday one of your daughter's friends from school came forward when she heard we had found a dead teenage girl. Didn't you see or hear the news yesterday?”

Ibrahim al-Abd was frozen, sitting as if encased in ice for a moment before he shook his head and his face cracked.

”Was it on TV? So then everyone knows what happened ...?”

Mik interrupted him. ”We put out a description. No picture was shown.”

Louise couldn't tell from Ibrahim's face whether he thought it was good or bad that the missing-person report had gone out.

”Last night we went out to talk with you and your wife after the tip from Samra's friend, but no one answered. Where were you?” she asked.

It took a moment before Samra's father replied.

”At my brother's house in Benlose, outside of Ringsted,” he explained, and Louise just nodded.

”How did you travel down there?” she asked.

”By car.”

Tears were making his eyes s.h.i.+ny again.

”We drove,” he continued, diverting attention from his fresh bout of weeping.

”When did you come home?”

”Midnight, maybe 1:00 A.M., I think.”

”But you didn't answer this morning either, when we stopped by again,” Mik interjected.

The man looked over at him and explained that he and his son had gone to work.

”My wife is very worried and didn't sleep at all. After my son and I left, she took the little ones to her sister's house.”

”When we went out to talk with you last night, your car was parked in the parking lot, and it was at just past ten. Does your wife have a car?” Louise asked.

He shook his head, but she had known the answer already. No other cars were registered to their address.

”If you didn't drive your car, then what car did you drive?” He didn't seem to understand what she meant.

”You drove down to your brother's house, you say. But your car was parked in the parking lot last night,” Mik clarified.

”No, no,” he said, jumping up from his chair and pacing back and forth again. ”We didn't drive. My son drove.”

”There is no vehicle registered in his name,” Louise interrupted.

”He's buying one. It's not all worked out yet, but he'll get it settled,” the father a.s.sured them.

Louise asked for the car's make and registration number, but the father could only say it was an older-model BMW.

”Could I just get your brother's name and phone number?” she asked, to be on the safe side, so they could compare that with the information Soren had dug up.

He sat down and gave her both.

”What happened? What happened to her?” he mumbled again, rubbing his forehead hard with his thumb and forefinger as his face once more took on an absent look.

Mik took over and pointedly asked Samra's father to describe in detail the period of time when he was last with his daughter.

Ibrahim calmed down a little, and Louise could almost see him pulling himself together and preparing to go through the last time he had been with his daughter. They waited as his breathing became regular again.

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