“I understand how hard it must be to discuss this now, but we need to know as much as possible about Julie. Can you tell us a little about her?” Jeppe asked gently. “What was she like? What did she enjoy doing? That kind of thing.”
Ulla Stender glanced at her husband, whose eyes were still closed.
“Well, Julie’s a sweet girl,” she said tentatively. “Normal, you know, happy… young. She liked going to concerts, loved the theater.” Mrs. Stender searched for the words she wanted but couldn’t muster more worth sharing.
“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt her?”
She shook her head, offended.
“How about someone who might have wanted to hurt either of you? Hurt you through Julie?”
She shook her head again.
Jeppe looked down at the table to give her a moment to blow her nose.
“Christian has had some friction with partners and customers, but never anything that couldn’t be solved with a game of golf. And I can’t believe anyone would have thought to harm Julie for something like that. I mean, that’s crazy!”
“How long have you actually known Julie?” Anette asked, breaking a pause from where she stood against the wall. “When were you and Christian married?”
Jeppe’s eyebrows signaled to Anette that she shouldn’t interrupt, but she didn’t take notice.
“In March 2004,” Ulla Stender replied, her eyes wandering uneasily. “Julie sang for us. ‘Fly on the Wings of Love.’ She was only nine years old! Everyone was tremendously impressed.”
Christian Stender whimpered and covered his eyes with his hands. His wife continued unsteadily.
“Julie was only an infant when I was hired by Christian’s company, and I’ve known the family all those years. After Julie’s mother… passed away—she had cancer—he and I grew closer. And, well, then we got married. I hope by now Julie sees me as her mother. Or saw me…” Ulla Stender had beads of sweat on her upper lip and was fiddling with her necklace.
“When did Julie’s mother die?” Anette asked, not yet ready to let Ulla Stender off the hook.
“Irene died in 2003,” Ulla replied, “but by then she had been sick for a long time. Christian was completely worn out from being at the hospital. It was a terrible time.”
Especially for Irene, Jeppe thought. It was clear that Ulla Stender was accustomed to having to defend her marriage. Had there been some gossip in small-town Sørvad when Mr. Stender married his secretary only five minutes after his wife was buried? Ulla Stender looked like a little child who wants to crawl under the table to get rid of the unwanted attention.
“How long has Julie been living in Copenhagen?” Jeppe changed the subject and flashed Anette a warning look.
“Six months,” Ulla said. “She moved here in March to settle in the apartment and find a part-time job before school starts in the fall.”
“Was she… raped?” Christian Stender’s raw voice cut through the room like a fork on a plate. Rape, the worst thing a father could imagine for his daughter.
“There was no immediate sign of sexual assault.” Jeppe sat motionless and observed the couple as he spoke. “But the perpetrator did use a knife.”
The father exhaled heavily and lowered his head again.
“And I’m afraid he cut her…,” Jeppe said, ignoring the sharp look on Anette’s face.
“We don’t know why, or exactly how, but some of the acts of violence took place before death occurred,” he continued. “I’m very sorry to have to tell you. If you have any idea what that might mean, it’s important that you share that with us.”
Ulla Stender put her hands over her mouth and shook her head in shock.
“We have a team at the national hospital standing by to offer you emergency crisis counseling if you… I have the number here.”
Christian Stender raised his head, eyes wide open. His face had turned the same pale color as the wall behind him. Then he threw up.
They had to cut the questioning short and lay him on a sofa with a bucket in front of him, but when he lost consciousness between two heaves, they put him in a recovery position on the floor and summoned an ambulance. His wife was taking shallow, rapid breaths as if she had just run up a steep staircase. Before the ambulance doors slammed shut Jeppe managed to warn her that the police would need to speak with them again.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Anette protested as the ambulance pulled away from the curb.
“What do you mean?”
“Why tell those poor people that the perp sliced into their daughter when she was still alive? That’s totally inappropriate. It’s not like you to be so insensitive.”
“We need to know if it means anything,” Jeppe protested.
“Yes, but for Pete’s sake, give them some breathing room for now! They’re still trying to process that she’s dead.”
“I’m the lead investigator, I don’t have to defend every little decision. It’s not like you were being particularly respectful yourself,” Jeppe said, kicking irritably at a rock and missing. An urge to destroy something welled up in him, and he had to restrain himself from picking up the rock and throwing it through the windshield of the nearest car.
Anette looked at him as if he had some nasty disease.
“I don’t give a damn who’s calling the shots,” she said. “Knock it off with the power plays, or whatever that was.”
“What exactly are you trying to say?”
“Chill! You’re just not acting like yourself. Forget it!”
She turned and walked back into the building. Jeppe stood watching the ambulance drive off until his anger subsided.
* * *
JEPPE WALKED PAST the stairs and into police headquarters’ inner courtyard, whose gloomy colonnade could darken even the fairest of summer days. He needed some air before returning to his colleagues in Homicide upstairs. The grass between the pavers sparkled in the afternoon sun, taking the edge off the harshness of the courtyard. It was growing so long, it could almost be mowed. Was it really impossible for the City of Copenhagen to find funds to weed it?
Anette was right. He was in a rotten mood. His lower back hurt, and he reminded himself to call his doctor and beg him for yet another OxyContin prescription.
But the dismal mood wasn’t from his back pain alone. Confronting other people’s infidelities obviously still affected him more than it used to. Christian Stender’s apparent affair with the secretary while his wife lay dying was repugnant to him, almost like a personal affront.
“You’re simply the best. Better than all the rest.”
Tina Turner’s tribute echoed from inside his temples, transporting him back to New Year’s Eve. Therese had been prettier than ever. That’s how he remembered it now, at any rate—unable to recall what she had actually been wearing. It wasn’t her clothing that made her beautiful, and it was the distance between them and his growing insecurity that made her unattainable. They had taken a taxi into the city, in plenty of time to hear Queen Margrethe’s televised address, as is custom at all Danish New Year’s celebrations. They were each looking out their window at the snowfall.