Part 27 (1/2)
Dean had pulled his chair back a little and was stretching out his legs. ”This all suggests your basic honor/shame scenario,” he said and looked at Skipper. ”One life doesn't matter that much when you look at their entire extended family-the ones living here in Denmark and the ones back home in Jordan-in which this kind of thing generally has ripple effects that people would prefer not to deal with.”
Louise could tell that Mik was going to contradict him, but he stopped himself.
”What about Hamid?” she asked.
Louise hadn't talked to Hamid herself. She had concentrated on Ibrahim and felt that eventually the two of them had built up a decent rapport. Mik had continued with Hamid, even though they still hadn't clicked.
”He's sick of it,” Mik said. ”And I also get the sense that he's afraid of what's going to happen. Whether they end up in jail or get kicked out of the country. He talks a lot about school and his friends, but he says he didn't know anything about his sister having a boyfriend. I had hoped, and still hope, that he could tell us who the boyfriend is. But apparently there isn't anyone who can.”
”What did the techs find? There must be something that can tie them to the two killings,” Louise said, and was immediately followed by Dean, who asked, ”What about the wiretap?”
”Nothing noteworthy,” Storm admitted, ”which is to say, no increased activity; but all three family members consented to let Bengtsen and Velin do a cheek swab on them, so we can check their DNA profiles. No DNA material was found on Samra and we have to a.s.sume that any that might have been there was washed away in the water, but we did secure several samples from Dicta. We just haven't heard back yet from the Forensic Genetics Lab if there was enough to construct a profile.”
Storm moved on to the witness statements. ”Several people saw Dicta down on the big lawn behind Hotel Strandparken on Sat.u.r.day afternoon when she was doing the photo shoot Michael Mogensen told us about. She went home to eat a little past six and left her house again at seven-thirty to bike over to Liv's place, where she was going to spend the night. She arrived there fifteen minutes later and stayed with Liv until a bit after eleven, when she left. Dicta said she was going to meet the photographer and promised to come back before the next morning, so Liv wouldn't have to explain to her parents where Dicta had gone.”
”And she was exchanging text messages with Tue Sunds all evening,” Louise interjected.
Storm nodded and continued. ”After that, the father of one of her cla.s.smates saw her on Ahlgade entering a shop, and a couple of witnesses also saw her downtown at that late hour, but no one can tell us with a hundred percent certainty exactly where they saw her. But the route fits nicely if she went from Liv's place toward Nygade and then on up to the train station. After that, there's no trace of her. Where was she going?”
”To Copenhagen,” the detectives said, all speaking at once, and Storm nodded again.
”Yes, we're a.s.suming that she went to the station to take the last train into the city at 11:45 P.M.”
”But she never boarded,” Bengtsen concluded, lost in contemplation for a moment. ”Should we try to recreate the route she took from Liv's place to the scene of the crime?” he asked, looking slowly around the table.
”We have a good working relations.h.i.+p with Venstrebladet,” Dean added, and said the paper had been known to include photos before if the police requested it to jog people's memories.
”That's not a bad idea,” Bengtsen agreed, looking at his younger colleague. ”Let's get one of their photographers to walk the route with us and take pictures of the locations where we know Dicta was seen and of the actual crime scene.”
Storm nodded and thought for a moment. ”Let's do it. But we can't do the same thing for Samra, because she wasn't killed out at Honsehalsen. She was brought out there after she was killed.”
”The duty officer just received a call from the harbor master that someone vandalized Ibrahim's boat yesterday or last night,” Ruth interrupted, having just walked in the door. She said that someone had painted extremely cra.s.s messages all over it.
”Maybe that means we should start paying attention to the threats against the family. At least as long as the mother is still living in the apartment with those two little ones,” Ruth said, taking a seat.
The group went silent. The newspapers had already described the mood in town as a lynch mob out to get the al-Abd family and other Muslim families as well. People were lumping all the Muslims together in terms of a.s.signing blame for the two girls' deaths. But until now the anger that had arisen had not been manifested in any kind of physical a.s.sault.
They discussed a.s.signing officers to protect Sada and her children or maybe moving them out of town.
”Let's contact Venstrebladet,” Storm said, concluding the meeting. ”We need to get those photos taken tomorrow.”
They all stood up and trickled out into the hall, heading off to shut their office doors before going to eat, when the cell phone in Louise's pocket started vibrating. She could see that it was Camilla and answered it with a perky ”What's up?”
Mik stepped on the back of her heel, giving her a flat tire, when she abruptly stopped, listening to her friend's torrent of words. When she hung up, she called her colleagues together before they had a chance to disappear into their offices.
”Aida is missing,” she said loud enough for everyone to hear her.
”What do you mean, 'missing'?” Skipper asked, stopping in the doorway to his and Dean's office.
Louise explained that Camilla had just received a call from Sada, who had explained, with some confusion, that the two children had had permission to go down and play in the sandbox before dinner. Dysseparken's minimal playground facility was off the end of the parking lot in front of the al-Abds' building.
Storm called them back into the command room and asked Louise to finish explaining.
”When Sada went down to get them, Jamal was sitting there alone, playing, and when she asked him where his sister was, he just said she'd left. Sada spent the last hour running around looking for her daughter until she called Camilla a second ago and asked her what she should do.”
”The little girl could have gone to visit someone,” Velin suggested. ”But we have to react, given the threats people have been making against them the last several days. We have to go find that girl.”
Louise agreed. They needed to act immediately. It really didn't matter what kind of mischief Aida might have gotten into. It was embarra.s.sing that the police hadn't responded to the threats. They had talked about providing some kind of protection for Sada and the little ones so many times, but it just hadn't been done.
”Why the h.e.l.l didn't she call us?” the MTF captain asked, irritated.
”Because-” Louise began, and Storm finished her sentence: ”So far, we haven't done anything besides split up her family.
So we're not her first choice to turn to when she needs help. We're going out there.”
38.
ASMALL GROUP OF PEOPLE ”OF ETHNIC BACKGROUND”-as Skipper put it-were gathered in the parking lot. Storm pulled Louise aside with a tug on her arm.
”Go find out what the mother says,” he told her and then returned to the others to start a search.
Louise spotted Sada right away. She was sitting on a bench with Jamal on her lap surrounded by a crowd of people. Louise made it to the middle of the crowd and was standing right in front of Sada before the woman noticed her and pointed over to the sandbox through her sobs. Just then Camilla came running up to them and Sada made room for her on the bench.
Everyone standing around moved back a little, uneasy about the level of intimacy they perceived between the blonde journalist and the Jordanian woman. Louise understood their reaction. This was an unfamiliar situation: an outsider was unreservedly offering the same degree of concern and caring they had been providing.
”Maybe she went over to someone's house?” Camilla asked when Sada looked up at her. And at that second, Louise had no doubt that Camilla was there as a private person and not as a journalist.
Aida's mother shook her head. In the background, Louise noticed that Mik and Skipper had started organizing the people who had turned out to help into a search party.
”Maybe somebody was bothering her, so she hid?” Camilla suggested, stroking Sada's arm as she spoke.
Louise looked at her. That wasn't unlikely, based on what Camilla had described the crowd of teenagers doing to Sada and the kids outside the train station.
Sada shook her head again. ”Then Jamal would have been scared too,” she said, ”but he was sitting here quite calmly, playing, when I came to get them.”
”When did you last see her?” Louise asked, leaning over to hear Sada's quiet voice.
”Four o'clock. They came down to play when I started making dinner.”