14

LOUISE LOOKED AROUND THE EMPTY FACULTY LOUNGE. There was a long table and several small clusters of sofas, stacks of books and newspapers, and a couple of empty coffee cups that had been left behind. It was bright and airy with a couple of colored reproductions hanging on the walls, and though it was an old school, it had obviously been renovated within the last few years. She had an appointment when classes got out to meet the four girls who’d been closest to Samra. School was canceled for the rest of the day, but Jette Petersen had asked permission for their class to meet for a memorial service in the gym before Louise took over.

“I’ll just get them all out the door,” Jette had said when they had spoken that morning.

Maybe she should have waited until Monday, Louise thought, walking over to the window, but then the whole weekend would have passed before she got a sense of the girl’s circle of friends. She saw a rented bus parking along the sidewalk, emptying its load of small children with wet hair and swimming gear in their hands. She followed them with her eyes as the herd disappeared across the playground.

The door opened and Louise turned around and said hello to a man, who gave her a funny look, wondering who she was.

She introduced herself and explained that she was waiting for Samra’s teacher. Jette Petersen’s co-worker just nodded at her and walked over to the table that served as a kitchenette and poured water into the coffee maker.

“It’s a sad story,” he grunted when he was done. The machine started gurgling a second later.

Louise quietly agreed with him.

“But who says the family’s behind it?” he asked, nodding at the morning papers that were sitting on the long table. Both front pages prominently featured the words HONOR KILLING. “She may just as easily have been the victim of a crime the family wasn’t behind. Isn’t that kind of jumping to conclusions?” he asked in a tone that made Louise feel as if he was holding her accountable for the coverage.

She hurried to say that of course someone else could easily have been behind it. “But there’s not really any motive to suggest that,” Louise continued, trying not to sound defensive.

Silence hung in the air between them and she took a seat. The coffee maker finished gurgling and the man pulled a couple of clean mugs out of the dishwasher. He asked her if she wanted anything in hers. She said “Milk, please” and asked if he might know anything the police hadn’t heard yet, since he had brought all this up.

He shook his head and said that it just seemed to him as if they were taking the path of least resistance. “You’re going after the easiest target,” he said, taking a seat. “If it had been a Danish family, you’d be searching for the perpetrator everywhere but inside the family.”

Really? You think so? Louise thought. “The second we have any other leads to follow, I promise you we will.”

“Even though Holbæk isn’t that big, there are crazy people here too. We’ve had a number of rapes,” the man began.

“Well, Samra wasn’t raped,” Louise interrupted sharply. “She was murdered, callously and coldheartedly. She was asphyxiated and had a concrete slab tied to her abdomen.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t know it was the family,” he said once more.

Louise sighed and conceded that he was right. No, they didn’t know. “But I can tell you that two of my colleagues have been looking for witnesses since she was found and no one saw her leave her parents’ home,” she said, thinking about all the interviews Bengtsen and Velin had done in Dysseparken and the neighborhood around the large residential area where the family’s apartment was located.

“But that also means no one saw her father drive off with her,” he pointed out, and again Louise had to concede. Samra could easily have left home without having been noticed.

“You’re just starting out with the assumption that the family is guilty—”

The door opened and he stopped talking.

Louise got up and walked over to put her mug in the sink. “We’re not assuming anyone is guilty,” she said, standing right across from him. “We’re following the leads we have as we continue to investigate the case.”

She was starting to get irritated and turned around to greet the girls Jette Petersen was just leading into the teachers’ lounge.

“We can go down to the classroom, which is at the end of the hall,” Jette said after they’d greeted each other. There were three girls in addition to Dicta Møller.

“Great,” Louise said, leading the way out the door without saying good-bye to Jette’s colleague.

Two of the girls, Fatima and Asma, were from immigrant backgrounds. Liv was Danish. Louise pulled a couple of tables together so they could sit across from each other. Jette Petersen sat down a little ways in the background as an observer.

“I’d really like to get a better sense of who Samra was,” Louise began, looking at the girls. “As far as I’ve understood, you were the ones who were closest to her.”

She was prepared for the crying and gave them plenty of time as it rapidly set in. The memorial service in the gym must have been tough on them.

“She’s my cousin,” said Asma, the thinnest of the girls, whose pretty, slender face was framed by a headscarf that was so tight-fitting that Louise couldn’t see a single strand of hair.

Louise sat for a moment, watching her, because it would have been hard to find someone sending more mixed signals than this girl. Of the four, Asma was the most provocatively dressed, so the demure head covering seemed completely out of place in combination with her plunging neckline and tight skirt. Louise’s eyes moved on to Fatima, who was a little stockier and seemed more relaxed about her appearance. She was wearing a pair of baggy pants and a stylish pink T-shirt and had a lot of curly black hair surrounding her face in a rather unruly hairdo.

Louise got back down to business and explained that she had already spoken with Dicta and that what she hoped to get out of today’s conversation was an impression of who Samra had hung out with. Who had known her, and what kind of person had she been?

She looked first at Fatima, who had been in Samra’s class.

“Our families know each other. We moved to Holbæk because my father grew up with Samra’s father back home in Rabba. So I played with her a lot during the years we’ve lived here.”

Louise was particularly struck by the girl’s use of the word “played.” That wasn’t a word Dicta would have used about the time she spent with Samra.

“When was the last time you saw her?” Louise asked. She had thought about whether or not she ought to meet with the girls individually, but had decided that having them all here together might help them loosen up.

“We saw each other last weekend,” Fatima said and nodded at Asma, adding that Asma had been there with her family too.

Asma explained that her mother was Sada’s sister. Asma was in the same grade, but had a different homeroom.

“How do you guys think Samra was doing?”

“She was doing well,” Fatima answered without hesitation, but then she gave Asma a questioning look. Asma, however, was lost in her own thoughts and didn’t respond to Fatima.

“Do you also think Samra seemed to be doing well when you were together last weekend?” Louise asked the girl’s cousin, when she didn’t respond.

The cousin hurriedly nodded, and Louise felt herself starting to get a little exasperated. “You know, I’d heard that she seemed like she was under a little pressure lately, but you guys hadn’t noticed that?” Louise prompted.

Fatima shook her head, but Asma looked Louise in the eye and said that there were times when Samra wasn’t that happy.

“Had she been like that lately?” Louise asked.

Asma shrugged. There was something vulnerable about her, evoked by her provocative sense of style and her covered hair. She didn’t look at all cheap in her tight-fitting clothes, it was more like she radiated a strong sense of feminine elegance, one that she was just way too young to carry off and that wasn’t fully realized because she was hiding one of the most feminine of bodily adornments: her hair.

“Did Samra say anything to you? She must have needed someone to talk to?” Instead of waiting for an answer, Louise asked the girls whom they talked to when they were sad. “Each other,” all four of them replied.

Dicta added that she also talked to her parents, and there was nodding all around the table. The others obviously did too, when all was said and done.

The silence in the classroom was oppressive until Louise asked if anyone thought the family might have been planning a wedding for Samra and that maybe that was what had been making her feel pressured.

Suddenly everyone was talking over each other.

“They wouldn’t do that,” Fatima exclaimed loudly and was interrupted by Liv, who exclaimed, “Well, they could just forget about that!”

“My aunt and uncle aren’t like that,” Asma said, once everyone had calmed down. “They’re not into that kind of thing.”

“But that’s what you Danes always think about us, isn’t it?” Fatima mumbled angrily.

“Samra would never have put up with that. She was way too independent to accept a decision like that,” Liv interjected, and the other girls agreed.

Louise studied Liv for a moment. Liv was hardly the first person Louise would have picked as one of Samra’s closest friends. Her leather jacket was worn, and the red T-shirt with the black dots she wore underneath it was faded. Louise couldn’t figure out whether the girl’s hair was standing up in stiff tufts because it was beyond greasy or if she’d painstakingly achieved this look with multiple hair products. It was hard to tell what color the girl’s eyes were behind all that thick black eyeliner.

“Well, good, we’ll forget about that then,” Louise said. “Do you think Samra would have sneaked out of the house at night without telling her parents?” she asked instead.

Both Dicta and Liv nodded, while Asma and Fatima took a little longer to contemplate the idea before they also acknowledged that she might well have done that. “Samra’s parents usually went to bed around ten, because her father had to get up early,” one of the girls added.

“Who would she have gone to visit if it wasn’t one of you guys?”

This time there was no rapid outburst of answers.

“She was very cautious,” Liv said, pulling her leather jacket tighter around her, as if she were a little uncomfortable talking and having the others’ full attention. “If they found out, her father would have been furious and then she would have been grounded for several months.”

Dicta agreed with Liv and said that Samra had been grounded a few times in the past.

“You can’t just fucking do that! I dare my parents to even try such a thing,” Liv said, her tone indignant. And Louise could easily imagine that they wouldn’t easily get away with that.

“Her parents hadn’t seen her since her mother said good night to her Tuesday evening. They thought she’d gone to school the next morning. But by the time the alarm clock rang at eight Wednesday morning, Samra was already lying out in Udby Bay.”

Louise knew it would be hard on them to hear her say it so matter-of-factly, but she felt she needed to shake them up a little. They weren’t giving her anything, and she had to get them talking if she was going to have any chance of making headway.

“Did she show up at any of your homes on Tuesday night?” Louise asked, and she was prepared when all four of them shook their heads. “Did any of you go out gallivanting with her and you’re not mentioning it now because your parents can’t find out?”

Her voice had become sharp, and she noted the look the teacher shot at her, but she didn’t stop. She carefully studied the young girls to determine what was going on behind their expressionless faces, but none of them seemed to be trying to cover up a lie.

“She must have disappeared in the evening or at night,” Dicta said softly, when the silence became unbearable.

Louise had the sense that a wall was being erected between the group of girlfriends, and it wasn’t hard for her to figure out what they were divided over. Accusers on one side and defenders on the other. Against the family and for the family. She was also afraid to put any words in their mouths, but they were dealing with facts here and she had to confront them with those. If anyone could come up with an alternative chain of events, they were more than welcome to do so.

“I already asked Dicta. But now I’m asking the rest of you if you know whether she had a boyfriend or a friend whom she saw in secret.”

Louise was ready for loud protests from Fatima and Asma and looked at them in surprise when they just shrugged and said there wasn’t anyone they were aware of. Dicta repeated that there hadn’t been anyone.

“You wouldn’t know shit about it,” Liv remarked caustically to Dicta. “The only thing anyone can talk to you about is your hair and your advertising jobs.”

“Modeling jobs,” Dicta corrected her.

“I just mean it’s not like Samra would have wanted to tell you anything—if there was anything to tell—since you’re always off in your own egocentric universe.”

Louise considered interrupting, but before she had a chance, Dicta managed to do so herself.

“Give it a fucking break already,” Dicta swore. “I don’t think I spend any more time on my hair than you do, so just drop it.”

Louise’s eyebrows were halfway up her forehead. There was something out of place about a rant like that spewing out of Dicta’s pretty young mouth, but it was effective. Louise had obviously misjudged her. And it surprised her just as much that Liv took it without any kind of comeback.

“Do you know something?” Louise asked, directing her question directly at Liv. She had made it sound like she did.

“I don’t know what it was, but I think there was something,” Liv replied cryptically.

“Well, how about a few more details, please!” Louise’s tone was a little harsh, harsher than she’d intended, and again she noticed a look from the girls’ teacher, who wished to protect her students.

Liv shook herself, as if she had promised more than she could deliver. The young black-haired rebel oscillated between feigned bluntness and paralyzing insecurity, which once again caused her to pull her leather jacket tighter around herself. But actually there was nothing flippant about her charm, Louise noted, studying Liv with interest as she began her response.

“I don’t know anything about any boyfriend,” Liv explained, “but it’s very clear that there was something. Something had hurt her, she had been upset, something had been painful.”

Dicta looked skeptical.

“Well, I certainly didn’t notice that,” Dicta said, looking over at Fatima and Asma. “Did you guys?”

“Maybe, but not the way you mean,” Fatima told Liv. “I think she seemed happy, as if she had butterflies in her stomach.”

Louise looked at each of the girls in turn. This was almost worse than no information at all, she thought. Everyone was going off in a separate direction.

“At some point did she maybe confide something in one of you?” Louise asked, hoping that her last question was down-to-earth enough and suitably open and naïve that maybe it would appeal to something in their teenage compulsion to confide in someone. But all four of them shook their heads.

Louise thanked them for their time and for the information they’d given her. She said good-bye to Jette Petersen and thanked her for her help as well. Then she left Højmark School to drive back to the police station with the sense that she hadn’t gotten very far.