22

THE MELODY WAS SO INSISTENT AND THE VOLUME RISING SUCH that it couldn’t be ignored. Louise did a rapid damage check inside her head before opening her eyes to be confronted with the mess she’d gotten herself into the night before. They had ended up in his bed after first making love on the sofa, then on the living-room floor. She had no sense of when they had collapsed from exhaustion. Actually, that’s not so bad, she thought.

Mik’s cell phone was ringing off the hook, and she shook him. The worst thing was that at one point he had whispered to her that this seemed like something she had really needed and she had hungrily agreed with him. After which she had really let go and abandoned herself to a level of enjoyment she could scarcely control.

To hell with the fact that she’d whispered a bunch of words she couldn’t really recollect now, she thought. What did it matter that she had let him see her like that? Well, maybe that wasn’t totally inconsequential. And she wasn’t proud of it either. She couldn’t believe she’d sold herself out by admitting that she had needed a man. That she was understimulated, and that she possessed a level of desire she herself couldn’t control once it had been let loose. She had a hard time excusing herself for that.

Mik had the cell phone to his ear and was talking quietly, intensely. He was already out of bed and standing by the dresser, pulling out clothes. Louise could feel him looking at her, but she kept her eyes closed so there was no contact.

“You’re going to have to wake up,” he whispered, stroking her cheek.

“What time is it?” she mumbled, not wanting to face reality.

“Almost six.”

He leaned over and kissed her until she opened her eyes and their eyes met. It wasn’t as bad as she had feared. He smiled at her and she focused on his left front tooth, which was missing one small corner. Then he straightened back up and explained that that had been the duty officer down at the station on the phone.

“They just got a 911 call from a woman who found a dead teenage girl in the parking lot behind Nygade,” he told her. “That’s the street that goes up to your hotel.”

Louise was out of bed and on her way to the living room, where her clothes lay in a heap on the floor. He followed her and kept talking as she got dressed.

“They’ve already started cordoning off the area.”

He gave her a serious look as she pulled on her socks, and then he went out to tend to his dogs before they left the house.

“It looks like one side of the girl’s head was crushed and she was very badly beaten,” he said, walking back into the living room with his car keys in his hand.

Louise cast a quick glance around the living room to see if she’d forgotten anything.

“I’ll catch a ride over there and—” she started, but was interrupted when he reminded her that that would make it very obvious to everyone else that the two of them had spent the night together.

That hadn’t even occurred to her, but she quickly agreed that he was right.

The October morning was still dark, and while he drove around the small turn and back in past Holbæk Marina at a pace that made it clear he’d driven that route countless times, she sat next to him speculating.

“How am I going to slip into the hotel if they’re cordoning off the area?” she finally asked, suddenly unable to assess the situation.

“I can let you off a little ways away, if you’d like. But I don’t mind in the least if the others see us together. I mean, it’s not like we did anything illegal.”

“We shouldn’t arrive together,” she said, a tad harshly. “I’ll wait over at the station for half an hour before I head over.”

He didn’t remark on her stern pronouncement, but pulled over to the curb so she could grab her bag from the back seat.

Louise was standing there with her bag with the car door open when she realized this was all too ridiculous.

“I’ll just walk in there,” she said, blowing him a kiss.

He shook his head. Then he got out, walked around the car, and kissed her good-bye—not a long kiss, but with an intensity that gently settled reassuringly around her.

“Talk to you soon,” she said, once their lips had parted. “Definitely soon.”

He got back in and drove the last four hundred meters past the police station over to Nygade.