Emma had been moved from one office to another, and then to a third – as staff had turned up for work and needed their desks. She 229had no idea whose office she was using right now, but judging by the photos on the desk, it was someone with a wife and three children.
She had left the office door open a crack. Investigators passed by with hurried steps. From time to time she could hear someone shout or run. The entire police station seemed in a state of hectic activity. Dedicated, focused officers all working towards the same goal – finding Sonja Nordstrøm.
Emma contemplated what she was usually occupied with at work. Kasper was right: celebrities were unimportant in the grand scheme of things, even though having dreams might mean a lot to some people. Once this story was done and dusted, she would have a chat with Anita. See if there was any possibility of working on something else at news.no.
There was less than an hour left until noon. Emma checked her emails. Still no messages or fresh demands. Now and again she visited the live link to see what Nordstrøm was doing, but there wasn’t much to see. She had done some sit-ups and push-ups around nine o’clock. Just before that she’d received a fresh supply of food and water. She’d yelled and screamed at the person who’d brought it, although he was out of view of the camera, so Emma had no idea whether he’d responded in any way. There was no sound on the feed.
A wild impulse made her call Kasper.
‘Well, I never, wonders will never cease!’ he said, with a smile in his voice.
‘Do you never just say hello to people?’ Emma asked.
‘Eh?’
‘You said that the last time I phoned you as well. About wonders never ceasing.’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I see I’m not original enough for your taste.’
Emma laughed this off. ‘How are things?’ she asked, without specifying whether she meant with him personally or with his work.
‘Fine, thanks,’ Kasper replied. ‘I’m just a little confused.’
‘Confused, how?’
‘Well, I felt that you and I maybe … had something. But when I 230tried to explore that a bit further, you … backed off. Completely. It was just pretty unexpected. And confusing.’
Emma knew what she ought to say, but couldn’t bring herself to do it.
‘Gothenburg’s not home,’ was all she said. ‘It’s easier to let go a little there.’
‘So what you’re saying is that the girl I met in Sweden doesn’t make an appearance in Norway?’
Emma did not answer.
‘Then I hope you’ll pay a visit to Denmark soon.’
Emma laughed. It was good to laugh again – it had been a long time.
‘I’m a bit stuck on this Jeppe Sørensen story,’ she said. ‘I can’t understand why Dahlmann would pick one of his victims in Denmark and bring him back to Norway.’
Kasper hesitated for a few seconds before agreeing that the Danish footballer was certainly the odd one out in the series of victims.
‘Have the Danish police or you Danish journalists looked into his Norwegian connections at all?’
‘The police are probably working on that, on both the Norwegian and Danish sides,’ Kasper told her. ‘We had two hits on Dahlmann in our text archives, but they were from the old case when he killed his ex-girlfriend and her new guy. He’s a maniac who’s been banged up in jail for the past few years. I can’t imagine that he and Jeppe knew each other.’
‘It could be through another Norwegian,’ Emma said. ‘A mutual acquaintance.’
Kasper paused for a moment again before agreeing.
‘Maybe his girlfriend would know,’ Emma suggested.
‘Yes, of course.’
She could hear that she’d given Kasper the spark of an idea.
‘Let me check that out,’ he said. ‘But only if you promise to answer my messages, or even just do something as simple as have a cup of coffee with me before I go home to Denmark. That would be nice.’231
Emma considered this for a moment or two.
‘Yes, it would,’ she replied, uncertain whether he would hear the reservation in her voice.
‘I’ll ring you soon,’ he said.
Emma thanked him for his help and hung up. She sat staring into space for a few minutes, overwhelmed by a feeling of restlessness. She hated waiting, hated not knowing. Kasper might well discover something, but she couldn’t just sit still without taking any action.
She opened some of the Danish web pages she was familiar with. Skimmed quickly through some of the countless articles about the Danish footballer’s death, in pursuit of any tiny detail the Norwegian media outlets hadn’t reported. But she found nothing of interest.
She decided to check Kasper’s coverage of Jeppe Sørensen, so she typed both their names into a search engine. It returned a massive number of hits, and she could not be bothered going through them all, since the articles generated by the Ritzau agency always ended up in lots of different newspapers. Emma contented herself with noting that Kasper had done a thorough job.
She was about to wrap up her Internet search when a link from the Dagbladet Holstebro-Struer newspaper attracted her attention. One of the articles seemed to be about the area Jeppe Sørensen grew up in. It focused on the fact that several members of the football team he’d played in when growing up had gone on to do remarkably well for themselves. What caught her eye, though, was Kasper Bjerringbo’s name; but he wasn’t mentioned as the author of the report.
In the photo accompanying the article, five of Sørensen’s teammates were circled in red. One of them was a member of parliament. Another was a high flyer in the financial world and had apartments in both Manhattan and Tokyo. But her eye lingered on the boy kneeling beside Jeppe Sørensen, an arm around him. Even though the picture was years old, it was easy to recognise Kasper Bjerringbo’s face.
It gave a description of his journalistic career, and said that within the Ritzau system he was known as ‘the journalist who didn’t just cover the news but created it himself.’232
A cold shudder shook Emma’s body.
She sat up straight. There was nothing wrong with being an old friend of a murder victim. Certainly not.
But why hadn’t Kasper mentioned it?