Chapter 12

“What the hell did you do to him?” The doctor snapped his bag shut. Meriton Bukoshi had submitted to the doctor’s treatment without batting an eyelid. “I ought to report this.”

Allan pulled the doctor aside, describing the arrest to him, while Sanne looked around Allan and Toke’s shared office. It was a good deal bigger and brighter than the broom closet she had been assigned, but otherwise the layout was the same. Just two of everything: desks, telephones, computers, chairs, and filing cabinets. But what made all the difference were the two large windows facing Niels Brocks Gade, which let in the light from the clear blue summer sky.

Allan walked the doctor to the door, then turned to the suspect.

“Well, Meriton. How about we have a little chat now?”

Meriton gave him a surly look. “Vetëm shqiptar.”

“What does that mean?” Sanne asked.

Allan folded his arms. “It sounded a bit like the name of their club, Shqiptarë. Does it mean Albania — or Albanian? No doubt he wants an interpreter.” Allan looked at Meriton inquiringly, who nodded and looked away at the same time.

“There, you see. He understands perfectly well what we’re saying. He just doesn’t feel like speaking Danish, isn’t that right Meriton?” Allan slapped the man on the shoulder.

Sanne flinched. Meriton smiled at her lewdly.

Allan looked at her. “Why don’t you find us a translator?”

By rights, she should complain about being treated like a secretary, but she was new here and she certainly didn’t feel like being left alone with Meriton Bukoshi.

A little while later, she returned with the translator, Shpend. He was tall and his eyes were constantly watery. His papers said he was in his mid-thirties but the guy looked at least ten years older.

She started coughing as soon as she opened the office door. The air inside was thick with cigarette smoke. Meriton was sitting bolt upright in the chair, hands on his lap. Allan sat on the windowsill. Hadn’t the ashtray been empty when she left? They had to be on their second, maybe third, cigarette each. Meriton raised an eyebrow when she hurried through the office to open a window. Allan stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray and, using his foot, pushed out a chair for Shpend. Sanne stood by the open window.

“Good.” Allan rubbed his hands and winked at Sanne. “Let’s get started.”

Meriton dropped his cigarette in the ashtray, mumbling to himself.

“We’d like to know what Meriton did on the night of May 5.” Allan looked at Sanne, who nodded.

Meriton raised his eyebrows, probably suspecting that someone had talked. They had to make sure they didn’t expose the girls. Sanne filled her lungs with a final mouthful of fresh air and sat down on the edge of the table behind the interpreter. Meriton followed her movements while he answered the questions, fixating on her breasts.

Meriton said he had been playing cards in their club, Shqiptarë, until late, maybe 3:30 a.m., except when he had gone to get some food around midnight. Afterwards, he went upstairs to a small room on the ground floor that he and his brother used for sleeping.

“Ask him to write down the names of the people he played cards with that evening.” Sanne placed a pen and paper on the table in front of Meriton.

Allan pulled her over to the other side of the office and whispered, “Why? Their friends would pin aggravated murder on their own mothers if the brothers asked them to.”

“No doubt. But if we can place just one of these alleged card players somewhere else, we have the first gap in his story.”

Sanne returned, nodded at Meriton, and pointed at the paper while Shpend translated. Scowling, the pimp started writing down a list of names.

“Tell him we know that he knows exactly why he’s here,” Sanne said. “And then ask him where his brother is.”

The interpreter translated; Meriton shook his head.

“He hasn’t seen him since the day before yesterday,” Shpend said.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door and a large, bald man in his fifties barged into the room. A considerable muscle mass was hidden beneath a layer of body fat.

“Hi Kim,” Allan said.

Kim A gave Allan a quick nod, then let his gaze fall on Meriton, who glared back at him. Then Kim A spotted Sanne. He pursed his lips and cleared his throat.

“Sorry,” he said, to Allan. “I was told you were asking for me?”

Allan raised his eyebrows. “Really? Who told you that?”

Kim A pointed backwards, looked at Meriton, then out the window. “I just ran into . . .” He stopped. “It was probably just a mistake. Sorry for interrupting.” Then he was gone.

“Who was that?” Sanne asked.

“Kim A. Former riot squad officer.”

“Isn’t he on the case that Lars is handling now?”

“That sounds about right.” Allan snorted. Was that a laugh?

Meriton mumbled something and Shpend pulled out a cigarette, lit it for him. He inhaled, blew out two enormous clouds of smoke, one from each nostril.

Sanne pulled Allan into the corner. “He can’t find out that we know they beat Mira. It will just get the other girls into trouble, and they’ll probably get a beating too.”

Allan nodded.

“Okay.” Sanne crossed the room, looked Meriton hard in the eye. She tried to ignore the penetrating stench of stale sweat. “So you do admit that you knew Mira?”

Meriton puffed his chest out. “She was a — how do you say — girlfriend?” Shpend translated. “He has not seen her since the night of May 4.”

Meriton took a drag on the cigarette; the ember flared up. He started speaking quickly, gesticulating; Shpend almost couldn’t keep up. “Meriton and his brother Ukë had agreed to meet Mira at Burger Palace on Vesterbrogade at 11:30 p.m. But she never turned up. Some of their other girlfriends” — Meriton laughed at this point — “had seen her on Absalonsgade an hour before. They’d had people out looking for her, but the ground might as well have opened up and swallowed her whole. Until he saw her on the front page of today’s paper.” Meriton nodded at the open copy of the tabloid BT on Toke’s desk.

Allan leaned forward in the chair. His stomach spilled out onto his thighs. “Do you know what I think? I think you and your brother discovered that she had a customer or two on the side.”

Meriton looked away, took a drag on the cigarette. “You don’t know shit. Danish police don’t know shit,” he said in Danish. “You need to find out who killed my friend Mira.” The interpreter stared at him open-mouthed.

Allan started to get up, his face flushed. Sanne had to pull him back down into the chair.

She waved the paper with the list Meriton had made in front of his face. “We’re going to check this list thoroughly. You’d better hope that one of your friends wasn’t somewhere else that night. In a car accident, ticketed for running a red light, bar fight . . .” Meriton’s gaze wandered. Sanne continued, “And when you see your brother, tell him we’d really like to have a word with him. Preferably today and at the very latest, tomorrow. If he doesn’t show up, we’ll make it our mission to destroy your business. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Meriton spat out the cigarette butt.

“Danish police,” he said getting up, then stomping toward the door. “You don’t know shit.”

A little later Sanne sat in her broom-closet-sized office. There were no windows and the walls were brown. The room smelled of linoleum and old paper. She twisted and turned a dirty envelope in her hand. The stamp was postmarked 22.4 Bratislava, Slovakia. One side of the envelope looked to have been opened with a knife.

She put the envelope down and sorted through the few, modest belongings Mira had left behind: a fake Dolce & Gabbana purse, cheap lace underwear, a pair of tight H&M jeans, two very short dresses, three tops, a shirt, and a down vest. There were also a couple of books in some Eastern European language. Judging by the covers, they looked to be medical romance novels of some kind. She opened the purse: a lot of cheap, no-name makeup, probably bought in some backstreet shop, and a couple of curled-up banknotes. One kept rolling up every time she smoothed it out. Forensics would most likely find remnants of cocaine on it. Lip balm, condoms. And, in an inside pocket, a small folded-up packet containing white powder. Sanne stuck a finger inside, tasted it. The powder tasted metallic, hard. Speed or cocaine. The purse contained no phone numbers, no papers — in fact, not one of Mira’s few possessions indicated anything about her as a person.

Apart from the one folded-up piece of paper and the envelope it was in.

Sanne took the letter out of the envelope. The words were incomprehensible to her, but it was signed by someone named Zoe, and Mira’s full name was written on the envelope: “Mira Vanin, P.O. Box 2840, Copenhaigen, Denimark.”

The least she could do was send an enquiry to the Slovakian police through Interpol.

Ten minutes later she was on the phone with Ulrik. She had to get his permission to get the letter translated.

“Sanne,” Ulrik said in that preppy schoolboy Danish. “I can assure you that who Mira was as a person is not important. She was a prostitute who was killed by a customer or by her pimps. We’re keeping our focus on her acquaintances in Copenhagen.”

Sanne seethed. The condescending man and the sentimental woman? Not with her.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “all the bleeding hearts and feminists as well as the press are coming down on us for not doing enough for female trafficking victims. Maybe it would be good to get to know Mira a little better, so if they start complaining again, we’ve covered that angle. You should know though, the letter won’t bring us any closer to her killer.”