She realized she was squeezing his frail palm too tightly and loosened her grip, patting the hand awkwardly. His tears slowly abated.
“Who—” he began, faltering, in the voice of a man who lived alone. Esther leaned in closer and concentrated on hearing him.
“Who. Is. She?” he got out. He was so hoarse that at first she didn’t understand what he was asking. He cleared his throat impatiently and pointed to the plastic pitcher of water. She poured some into a used cup and let him drink, refilled it, and waited until he was ready.
“I fell on a… body,” he stuttered. “There was blood on the walls. The police wouldn’t tell me anything.” Gregers looked sunken, decrepit—she suddenly realized she thought of him as old and herself as… something else.
“I don’t know who she was, Gregers,” she said. “The police still aren’t ready to disclose anything.”
“Was she dead? When I… found her. Was she dead?”
Of course, she thought. That’s what he’s afraid of! He’s worried he could have saved her. Hadn’t the police looked after him at all?
“Gregers, listen up now,” Esther said authoritatively. “She had been dead for a long time by the time you got there. There wasn’t anything you could have done, do you hear?” She actually didn’t know when the girl had died, and she didn’t know any of the specific details. But she saw no reason to not reassure him any way she could.
Without warning, she had a sinking feeling in her gut, fast like a falling ton of bricks. The hangover haze she had been walking around in the whole day suddenly lifted as focus was shifted off herself. A murder in my building, she thought. Oh, how terrible! Far too terrible to wrap one’s head around. Her throat tightened. Had it really happened? And why?
“Why?” Gregers asked with pleading eyes, unaware that his thoughts echoed hers.
Esther felt a sharp pang of guilt but pushed it aside.
It must be a coincidence. A sick, long-shot coincidence.
Her father calls every other day. Sometimes she answers, today she lets it ring; she just can’t face dealing with him. She misses her mother, whose illness and death have left her in a state of permanent longing. A longing to be seen and loved for what she really is, a longing for once again hearing her mother’s reassurances. You will always be my Star Child, her mother had said, and I shall always help you carry life’s burdens. Now she carries the weight by herself. Her father can’t help with that. He still thinks she’s his innocent little girl.
She sets her towel and books into her bike basket and rides across the Knippelsbro bridge. The streets are deserted in the midday heat. She stows her bike at a rack on the flat stretch of road that leads to the airport, Amager Strandvej, locks it, and walks to the beach, her basket scratching her bare thighs. Takes a selfie on the wooden bridge and posts the shot to Instagram.
The beach is full of half-naked bodies in half-melted positions. She finds a corner for her things and slowly undresses, aware of every set of eyes taking in her striptease. She draws it out, until she’s standing there in her bikini and sunglasses. She stretches and squints at all the people through her dark lenses.
A bald guy stops in his tracks, letting his ice cream melt over his fingers as he devours her with his eyes. Dirty old man. She looks toward the horizon, distant and unattainable, and bends down to her basket with her legs straight to retrieve her sunscreen. Applies it slowly and thoroughly for the many gazes glued on her.
But there is one set of eyes she doesn’t see. A set of eyes hidden behind sunglasses, watching her body as if it belonged to him. As if her skin were a canvas. If she’ll only reconsider what she’s doing, she still has time to prevent it.
But she doesn’t.
CHAPTER 6
The bunker-like interrogation room six was certainly no junior suite, but even so, Jeppe felt more comfortable in this official setting than he had in the gloomy room at the Hotel Phoenix.
The detectives had arrived at headquarters with the Stenders a half hour ago, and now Christian Stender sat holding his wife’s hand, rocking mindlessly in his chair and chanting quietly to himself. Anette was leaning against the wall in her usual Philip Marlowe style, only moving to step aside for an officer who brought sweet tea in two white plastic cups.
Jeppe nodded gravely to the couple to show that they had to proceed with the horrible subject.
“I understand that this must come as a terrible shock to you,” he began, making eye contact with Ulla Stender, who blinked back at him a couple of times. “Unfortunately, we need to inform you of some circumstances and also ask you a few questions, even though it’s difficult.”
She nodded hesitantly.
“We have made what we consider to be a one hundred percent positive identification, so you won’t need to physically identify the actual… body. You’re welcome to see her one last time. However, I would advise against it. She won’t look like her usual self, the way you know her.”
Ulla Stender flinched at those uncomfortable words; Christian Stender sat frozen.
“Next, I need to ask how you feel about an autopsy,” Jeppe continued. “Do you have any objections?”
Ulla sneaked a glance at her husband and then shook her head. Asking was mostly a formality—the body would be autopsied, even if they said no.
“Thank you,” Jeppe said. “We also need to ask you if you know the whereabouts of Julie’s roommate, Caroline Boutrup. Given the nature of the case, it’s urgent that we locate her.”
The grieving father closed his eyes and continued his internal dialogue. Chatting with the divine, Jeppe supposed. His wife replied.
“Julie doesn’t tell us much, but I know from Caroline’s parents that she was going canoeing with a girlfriend this week. In Sweden somewhere.”
Jeppe slid a notepad across the table to her.
“Would you write the names of any friends, classmates, or other contacts Julie had both here in Copenhagen and back home in Sørvad. We’ll need to talk to everyone she knew.”
Ulla Stender thought for a moment and wrote down a few names.
“We also need to ask you where you both were yesterday evening. It’s purely routine. We ask everyone this whenever they have anything to do with a case.”
“Last night, overnight?” Ulla Stender asked, briefly glancing up from the notepad before continuing to write. “Well, we were asleep at the hotel. We arrived Tuesday—was that really only yesterday?—and met Julie for coffee in the afternoon at a café close to the hotel. Christian had important meetings scheduled for today and tomorrow, but they’ve been canceled, of course.”
“You didn’t run out to grab a drink or anything?”
“No, we had gotten up early and were exhausted, so we just took a little walk in the Nyhavn neighborhood and then went back to the hotel. Had room service for dinner in front of the TV. I think we were in bed by eleven.”
“How did Julie seem when you saw her?”
“Well, she seemed like herself. Happy and content. Told us about the degree program she was about to start. She was on her phone for most of the hour we spent together, you know how it is nowadays.”