28

LOUISE WAS SCURRYING TO THE COMMAND ROOM FOR A MEETING with the others and hadn’t noticed their presence until she heard a hoarse male voice behind her.

“Did that man have something to do with the murders?” Ibrahim al-Abd asked from the row of chairs along the wall. Sada was sitting next to him, well hidden behind her veil, which was wrapped tightly over her face.

Something had happened to his face since she’d seen him last. Something dry and stiff had come over it, like bread that had been left out too long. He had expressed intense grief when they had last been together; now he expressed nothing, and his eyes watched her with a lackluster gleam. She walked over and sat down next to them.

“We came because we’re afraid the new murder will make you forget about our daughter,” Ibrahim began. “I presume now you’re probably only interested in the Danish girl, whom Samra knew?”

Louise mollified them by explaining that murder investigations didn’t work that way. You didn’t just drop one case because a new one came along.

“Obviously, at the moment, we’re trying to identify who murdered Dicta Møller. But you can rest assured, we’re still doing everything we can to find out what happened to your daughter.”

Sada gazed at her with a dark, unhappy look, which made Louise want to put her arm around the woman and comfort her. Instead she said that the police would really like to speak to them at some point in the near future, to find out what they knew about Dicta and the two girls’ friendship.

“Please don’t let our daughter end up on the back burner,” Ibrahim pleaded. His voice cracked, and his wife looked down at the gray-laminate floor.

Louise knew what he meant. So she tried to calm them by explaining that a team of eight people was still working on their daughter’s murder, working what must be described as expanded hours.

“We promise to let you know as soon as there’s anything new,” she said, holding out her hand as she stood up to join everyone else in the command room.

“Was it the same killer?” Storm asked as she opened the door.

The others were sitting around the table and the meeting was under way.

Bengtsen shook his head and was backed up by Skipper, who had extensive training in criminal profiling.

“The two girls’ murders can’t be compared.” Skipper stood up and walked over to the dry-erase board, where he drew the two girls as stick figures and wrote “organized” and “disorganized” over their heads.

Louise pulled out a chair and accepted the cup of coffee Søren handed her.

“One murder was committed by someone organized, one by someone disorganized,” Skipper continued. “The organized one was thinking about his or her own safety and planned how to dispose of the body in advance, and we can certainly assume that the culprit doesn’t live in the proximity of Hønsehalsen. The act suggests that there was a relationship between the killer and the victim.”

Everyone seemed to agree.

“The murder of Dicta Møller, on the other hand, appears to have been committed by someone disorganized, and in terms of motives I think it’s obvious that it was an emotional act stemming from a feeling like revenge or jealousy, for example. It was a spontaneous killing, and the murderer could easily have been seen from one of the surrounding apartments. Everything suggests that the location where the body was found was also the scene of the crime.”

Louise had noticed that there were first- and second-floor apartments with windows looking out over the parking lot and had thought that the murderer was lucky no one had seen anything.

Storm stood up and moved to stand next to Skipper, from where he addressed the room.

“At present there are no commonalities between the murders of these two friends. Thus we will continue to investigate the two cases individually,” he said and added that of course they should remain more attentive than usual to the coincidence that both girls were in the same class.

“A number of the ninth-grade parents have already called, expressing serious concern,” Ruth interrupted. “They’re afraid more students in the class may be in danger.”

“I have a hard time believing that we’re dealing with a murderer who has set out to systematically wipe out a whole school class,” Storm said, running his hand through his hair, “but of course it’s impossible to rule that out at this point.”

He turned to Bengtsen and said, “Maybe you should drop in on the ninth-grade class and fill them in a little on our work. A small bit of information often goes a long way in calming people’s fears.”

Bengtsen nodded and said he’d do that right away.

“We should talk to the local photographer who worked with Dicta,” Storm said and looked at Louise.

She sat there for a moment as Bengtsen left and the others stood to go. She was thinking about Dicta Møller and all her dreams. Yes, when Mik came back, they’d have to get hold of Michael Mogensen, but first they had to go out and take a look at Dicta’s room. There had to be something there that could advance the case.