Part 10 (1/2)
13.
WHEN CAMILLA STEPPED ACROSS THE THRESHOLD OF THE al-Abd family's apartment in the yellow-brick row house a little after eight-thirty, she noticed how densely packed the place was with furniture. Dressers, shoe racks, a display case, a row of hooks above so that a thick blanketlike layer of clothes hung over the rest. She smiled and introduced herself to a short, thin woman who only came up to Camilla's shoulders and wore an attractive black scarf over her head.
”I'm Camilla Lind. I'm with Morgenavisen,” she said, and then hurriedly continued, ”I'm so sorry about what happened to your daughter.”
Even though it was the most glaring cliche to fire off at the woman, Camilla meant it. After she had arrived in town the day before, she had taken a spin through downtown Holbaek to track down some teenagers who had known Samra and were willing to talk about her. The picture of the young immigrant girl that had emerged was basically no more heartrending than if it had been any other young girl who'd been killed in the same way, but it also didn't help make the situation any more comprehensible. Extremely sweet, helpful, fun, smart ... it had been a long list of superlatives. But what had struck Camilla most was how raw the teenagers' grief was. They had been genuinely floored by a level of pain and turmoil that they didn't comprehend. They understood that the worst had happened and they were responding to it, but they had in no way been prepared to have the foundations of their lives yanked out from underneath them that way. The safe and innocent world they'd known had disappeared all of a sudden, pus.h.i.+ng them several steps closer to the seriousness and sorrows of life.
”I'd really like to talk to you a little,” Camilla continued.
Sada al-Abd started retreating back into the apartment, eyes downcast to the floor. Camilla knew she was thirty-seven years old and that she understood and spoke some Danish. She heard a young child's voice from inside the living room, and a second later a cute little girl with dark curls dancing around her head came to the doorway, casting a slightly shy glance at the female stranger. In the background Camilla spotted a little boy, who was sitting on the floor playing with some blocks.
The mother said something to her daughter in a language Camilla didn't understand, and the girl smiled, her mouth full of chalk-white teeth that would have made a great ad for Arla, the dairy company, and disappeared back into the living room to join her little brother.
”I didn't want to bother you,” Camilla quickly told the mother. ”But I was talking to some of Samra's friends in town yesterday and they told me such nice things about your daughter. I thought you might like to hear what they said.”
She waited to see how much of her Danish the mother seemed to understand. The woman's eyes were still trained on the floor, but she nodded weakly at Camilla's words. However, as soon as Camilla finished talking, the woman shook her head and softly said, ”You have to go.”
Camilla stood there for a moment, looking at the Jordanian woman. She couldn't tell if there was fear mixed with the profound grief emanating from her.
”We could also meet somewhere else to talk,” Camilla suggested, making another attempt. ”I'm going to have to write about this story, with or without your cooperation. But it would be better if you would talk to me.”
Again the woman shook her head.
”I can't talk to you.” She had a thick accent in Danish, but she was very understandable.
Camilla sensed motion behind her before she heard a voice say, ”What are you doing here? Leave us alone.”
A man had entered without her having heard him, and when she turned around he was standing right behind her.
”You must not come here and bother us....”
The man's voice grew louder and Camilla tried to explain that she was not trying to bother anyone, that she just wanted to talk to them about what had happened. But everything she said was drowned out by his yelling.
Then he turned his rage on Sada. ”What did you tell her?” he yelled.
She shook her head. ”Nothing.”
”I'm calling the police,” he screamed at Camilla. ”You need to get out of here NOW!”
She watched how he punched the b.u.t.tons on his phone, s.h.i.+fting angrily from one foot to the other in his eagerness to get through. Sada stood still, as if nailed to the spot, her eyes on her own feet, as Ibrahim moved to the living room to talk.
Camilla moved a step closer to her and said, ”I know you reported him for abuse and spent some time at a shelter, but then you came back to him. How could you do that to your daughter?”
The mother jumped as the import of the words. .h.i.t her. She looked up and stared Camilla right in the eyes but didn't say anything.
The man's infuriated voice was echoing in the background. He had finally gotten through to a human.
”I'm staying at the Station Hotel and I hope you'll decide to talk to me. But I'm going to be writing my articles whether you do or not.”
Camilla nodded a quick farewell before the husband returned. As she walked down the stairs, she briefly contemplated whether she ought to call the Holbaek Police herself and let them know she was the one who had stopped by to see the family and triggered this enormous outburst of anger. But that might be blowing things out of proportion, she thought.
The sun was s.h.i.+ning, enveloping the parking lot between the buildings in a soft, golden sheen, and there was some warmth in its rays despite the season. Camilla b.u.t.toned her cardigan and climbed into the driver's seat of her car. Well, that didn't go well, she thought. It would be hard to recover from that beginning. She supposed the ball was in Samra's mother's court now, since Camilla hadn't had a chance to say she would come back. The father would skin his wife alive if he found Camilla interviewing her in the apartment. Plus there were the two little kids. It would end in chaos.
”I'm going to kill that wh.o.r.e.”
”You mustn't say kill. Or die. What are you doing to us? Can't you understand that they're going to come and take my children away from me if you say things like that? Stop it!”
The heated voices could be heard in the background, but the interpreter's monotone translation remained calm and unaffected by the things that were being said.
”You're ruining it for us, and we'll all end up in there....”
”In jail,” the interpreter explained, glancing up at Louise, who was standing with the rest of the team, listening in on the audio surveillance feed.
”For G.o.d's sake, don't ruin anything else,” the interpreter continued, concentrating again on the unintelligible words whirling around the Danish police officers' heads.
Again a man's voice on the tape: ”I didn't say kill. I said I'll hit you!”
”Why are you saying these things?”
”I'm going crazy. I'm going to kill myself too.”
”You mustn't say that word at all. They're going to take my babies away from me.”
The woman started crying loudly.
”Get out, get out! I don't want to hear any more....”
A door slammed and Storm impatiently asked for the tape to be stopped so they could discuss what they'd heard.
During the morning briefing, Storm had informed them that they were going to have to do without him for the rest of the day. With a little embarra.s.sment he had explained that he certainly knew it was impractical and that it was coming at an unfortunate time, but the appointment had been made a long time ago. He was going to teach a continuing education course at the Police Academy Center in Avno and he had to be there until ten o'clock that night because they were having a big farewell dinner.
Louise got the sense that he was anxious to get out of there, but he obviously also felt like he had to be present while they prepared, before bringing Samra's family back in for another round of questioning an hour later.
They were brought into the interrogation room at ten o'clock. The National Police's staff interpreter, Fahid, had arrived early that morning so he could listen in as the family woke up. Normally they would have had the audio material transcribed and would have waited until they had the translated transcript in their hands, but Storm had decided that there was enough time pressure in this case that they had to skip that step. So instead they had the interpreter doing a simultaneous interpretation directly from the tape, which would allow them to pick up the last few important details before the couple arrived.
”He calls his daughter a wh.o.r.e,” Soren Velin said, offended.
Fahid shook his head and explained that it wasn't Samra but the female interpreter who was being called a wh.o.r.e.
”He's accusing her of stabbing him in the back during the questioning. He's very upset during this conversation,” Fahid said. ”They were apparently just visited by a journalist, who was standing in the doorway talking to his wife when he came home, and he feels like everyone is against him.”
”What was that stuff about the kids?” Louise asked.
”That has to do with the problems stemming from Sada's stay in the shelter. A note was placed in the file that the state was considering removing the two youngest children from the home if the internal family problems continued.”