* * *
“DOES ANYONE KNOW what’s keeping Saidani?” Jeppe asked casually, tinkering with the computer cables, his back to his colleagues. In principle he was the most likely to know where Detective Sara Saidani was since he had spent most of the night in her bed, but—they had agreed—for the time being this detail didn’t concern the rest of the Homicide crew.
“Maybe she has a sick kid, like usual?” Detective Thomas Larsen guessed. “Rubella? Plague? Those kids are constantly coming down with something that keeps her from coming to work.” He tossed the paper cup he’d just drained of expensive takeout coffee into the trash in a neat arc. Larsen had neither children nor any desire to acquire them—a view he did not hesitate to share with his colleagues.
Jeppe looked at the clock over the door. It was 10:05.
“We’ll have to start without her,” he said.
He made sure the computer was connected and adjusted the brightness of the image that flickered before him on the meeting room’s flat screen. Then he turned and nodded to his twelve colleagues who were waiting, notebooks on their laps and eyes alert. A mutilated woman found in a fountain on Strøget was no everyday occurrence.
“All right!” Jeppe began. “The call came in to Dispatch at five forty-two a.m. and we had the first patrol car on the scene six minutes later. The physician who rode along with the first responders declared the victim dead at six fifteen a.m.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Lima Eleven immediately decided the death was suspicious and called us.”
The door to the meeting room quietly opened and Sara Saidani slipped in and found a chair. Her dark curls glistened with rainwater, and her eyes beamed. Jeppe experienced the familiar surge of feeling wide awake when she was nearby. Sara Saidani, colleague in the Investigations Unit, mother of two, divorced, ethnically Tunisian, with hazel eyes and skin like honey.
“Welcome, Saidani.” Jeppe glanced down at the notepad in front of him even though he knew quite well what it said.
“The deceased has been preliminarily identified as health-care aide Bettina Holte, fifty-four years old, resides in Husum. She was reported missing yesterday, so her picture is in POLSAS, but the identification hasn’t been confirmed yet.”
POLSAS was the police’s internal reporting system, where all information about open and closed cases was stored. It sounded fancy and efficient. It wasn’t.
“Her family has been summoned to an identification, so we’ll hear back soon. The body was naked, lying facedown, as you can see in this photo.”
Jeppe pointed to the grainy image, pushed a button, and moved to a close-up of a white body in black water.
“According to a witness statement,” Jeppe said, “the body was not in the fountain at five a.m., so we’re operating on the assumption that she was brought there between five and five forty a.m. We’re working on securing footage from all the surveillance cameras.…”
“Kørner?”
“Yes, Saidani?”
“I took the liberty of gathering the footage from the city’s cameras in that area and looking through them. That’s why I was late.” Sara Saidani held up a USB flash drive pinched between two fingers. “The footage from the camera above the convenience store is good. Fast-forward to five seventeen a.m.”
Jeppe accepted the flash drive with an appreciative nod, opened the recording, and fast-forwarded. The screen showed a sped-up version of a dark, empty public square without any movement other than a bicycle tipping over in the wind. At 5:16 a.m., Jeppe slowed the playback to normal speed, and after a minute a shadow appeared at the top of the frame.
“He’s coming from Studiestræde, heading toward the fountain,” Larsen said enthusiastically. “What’s he riding on?”
“He or she is riding a cargo bike. Just watch!” Sara snapped her fingers in irritation and pointed to the screen.
The dark figure approached the fountain and the streetlamps over Frederiksberggade. Sure enough, the person rode in on a cargo bike and was covered by a dark-colored rain poncho with the hood on. It was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman, or even a human. The bike stopped by the fountain, and the rider dismounted easily, as if the move was familiar.
“He gets off like a man, swinging his leg around behind the seat,” Larsen said. He stood up and demonstrated what he meant.
Sara quickly pointed out, “That’s how I get off my bike, too. That doesn’t mean anything. Now watch the cargo.…”
The figure in the rain poncho pulled a dark cloth or plastic cover off the long flatbed of what looked like a cargo bike. The bright skin of a dead body lit up in the dark. The figure quickly and effortlessly lifted it over the edge of the basin. Once the body was in the water, the figure continued to stand there.
Jeppe counted two seconds, five.
“What’s he doing?” he asked.
“Staring,” Larsen suggested. “Saying goodbye.”
After seven long seconds, the dark figure climbed onto the cargo bike and rode away from the fountain, back in the same direction it had come from.
Jeppe waited for a second to make sure there was nothing more to see, then stopped the playback. A murderer on a cargo bike, only in Denmark! He sighed.
“Saidani, would you please send the footage to our forensic friends at NKC and ask them to look for other surveillance cameras in the area so we can track where the bike rider came from? We ought to be able to follow his or her route through most of the city.”
Sara’s eyes settled on him from the second row of chairs. She looked happy, her face bright with enthusiasm. Love, perhaps? Jeppe hurriedly averted his gaze before he broke into an inappropriate smile.
“As always, we’re working with how, why, and who,” he said. “Falck and I will be partners; Saidani, you’re stuck with Larsen.”
Larsen raised both arms in a victory pose, and Jeppe felt a stab of irritation that the fool got to hang out with Sara. But there was no way around it. They couldn’t risk people gossiping.
“Falck and I will take the autopsy and then talk to Bettina Holte’s immediate family, assuming of course that it is her. Saidani checks mail, phone, and social media as usual.”
Sara nodded and then asked, “Are all of her things missing—her wallet, phone, the clothes she was wearing?”
“Nothing has turned up yet.”
“Ask her family members to hand over her computer and get her phone number so I can pull her call history. Maybe she communicated with the killer,” Sara said.
“Will do,” Jeppe said. “Larsen handles witnesses and talks to her colleagues, neighbors, and whoever else there might be to question.”
Jeppe looked around the room at the team. His own investigation team plus reinforcements, ready for the first twenty-four-hour, labor-intensive push to gather evidence.
“We need to do a door-to-door around Old Market Square and question any potential witnesses we find in connection with that. Maybe there was a sleepless neighbor who looked out a window at quarter past five this morning.”
One of the officers raised a gigantic paw in the air and nodded, the light bouncing off his bald head. Jeppe recognized him as either Morten or Martin, one of the young, recent hires.