The Woman in the Hotel Page 4

  “We’d better get up,” David whispered and stroked the long, blond hair away from her forehead before kissing it.

  Markus had come into the bedroom several times to ask when they were leaving. They had promised to take him to Grenen and ride the “Lug Worm” bus to the spot where two seas meet each other.

  “Have you packed your swimming stuff?” Camilla asked with a smile when the bedroom door was pried open for the eighth time. “We’ll go to the beach on the way back.”

  The currents out by Grenen were far too strong for swimming, and the two of them hadn’t been to the beach much since arriving.

  “Let’s make sure we don’t get back too late,” said David when she finally got out of bed.

  Camilla turned to him questioningly.

  “We’ve been invited for dinner at Ruth’s Hotel tonight,” he said and wrapped a towel around his waist.

  She cocked an eyebrow.

  “Both Olav and Hasse live out there with their families, and rumor has it that the crown prince and princess have just arrived. So I’m guessing there’s going to be a little party after dinner.”

  Camilla was aware that her boyfriend was friendly with several people close to the royal couple, but she was annoyed that he’d made arrangements on her behalf without telling her first.

  “There’ll be drinks at seven and dinner afterwards. If we’re back at half past five, we’ll have a bit of time to wash and dress.”

  They were interrupted when Markus banged open the door with a picnic basket in his hand, which Eva had made for him. A towel and a snorkel poked out. He also had some crackers and a bottle of water.

  “Come on.”

  * * *

  At a quarter to seven, David pulled two bikes out from the shed.

  “We’ll leave the car,” he announced, when Camilla was finally ready. She wasn’t really up for it, but all day long she had sensed that tonight was payback time for his patience and understanding when she had suddenly up and left for Skagen and stayed there. That was why she had taken extra care doing her hair and putting on makeup. She had even managed to buy a new designer dress, since she hadn’t packed anything suitable for dinner at Ruth’s before bolting out the door back in Copenhagen, heading for the neurosurgical ward at the hospital in Aalborg.

  They were well down Højenvej when they were overtaken by an ambulance with flashing lights. Camilla got off her bike and pulled over to the side of the road, and a moment later two police cars came along, sirens blaring.

  David turned around on his bike and waved at her impatiently. They were already ten minutes late. But when Camilla saw the ambulance and two police cars make a right turn three streets ahead, she quickly jumped back on her bike and went after them, ignoring his calls.

  Her heart in her throat and a piercing stitch in her side, she arrived and saw the ambulance parked in front of Annette’s house. Apparently, another police car had arrived before the others; Michael was greeting his colleagues while giving them a quick briefing.

  Camilla threw down her bike and ran the last stretch where the sand was too heavy to ride on.

  She had almost reached the house when Michael spotted her and came up to her, waving his arms.

  “Don’t go in there,” he said and stopped her.

  Camilla tried to tear loose and run on, but he held her tightly, and suddenly everything went cold inside her. Her strength oozed out of her, and she collapsed on a small dune by her friend’s driveway.

  If she had driven Annette to suicide with her article, she would never write another line.

  Michael sat down in the sand and put an arm around her. More cars arrived and men in white coveralls went into the house. Camilla watched it all happen as if in slow motion, her throat constricted. She had trouble breathing.

  “It’s the CSI techs from Aalborg,” Michael explained and nodded toward the coveralls. “Her mother found her an hour ago. I’ve never heard anybody cry that hard.”

  “How did she do it?” Camilla asked, not knowing if she could deal with the answer.

  Michael looked at her, shook his head, and held her close while he stroked her hair.

  Another car came, and the medical-legal expert got out.

  “Annette didn’t take her own life,” Michael said, drawing back a little in order to see her face. “What happened in there is far more ghoulish than your average suicide. There’s no doubt that she’s been murdered.”

  6

  “I want to see her,” Camilla shouted when the words had fully penetrated.

  Michael shook his head and got up.

  “You can’t go in there,” he said as an officer came up to them. “The perpetrator has tried to cover his tracks by starting a fire, and there’s a reason for that. It’s not a pretty sight.”

  Fire again! She looked at him inquiringly, but Michael shook his head and calmed her down by saying that there was nothing about the arson connecting it to the one at the paper.

  “He’d put a big pile of clothes on the stove and turned on all the hotplates. Some of it caught on fire, but it didn’t develop into a real fire. It doesn’t seem very well planned, and he’s been too busy getting away quickly to do a proper job of it.”

  Camilla noticed David as he came walking through the sand with long steps. He was visibly annoyed and pointed to his wristwatch.

  “We can’t very well leave the party waiting any longer,” he said from a distance.

  Camilla felt his anger but only shook her head listlessly.

  “You go, I’m backing out. Annette is lying dead in there. Your friends will probably understand that I’d have a hard time getting into a party mood.”

  David looked, dismayed, from her to Michael, who confirmed that a crime had been committed. Then he took a step back and looked toward the house and the cordon the police had already thrown around it. The CSI techs were collecting data. One of them was walking around with a camera while others secured footprints. They had already dusted the front door for prints.

  “Just go,” Camilla repeated. She didn’t even want him to stay. David had never known Annette and simply didn’t fit in with the thoughts her grief had set in motion.

  He was just about to say something but was interrupted by the officer, who stepped up to ask what her connection to the deceased was.

  “I’ve known Annette since we were kids.”

  She hardly noticed David walking back to his bike. She heard, as if through a fog, Michael tell the officer that he would handle the interview himself.

  “She’s a bit worn out right now,” he explained.

  Worn out was hardly an exaggeration, she thought, trying to get on her feet, still unsure if her legs would carry her.

  Michael extended an arm while she got a cigarette going.

  “What happened in there?” she asked and exhaled smoke. “Anything to do with money?”

  “Nothing indicates a burglary. Besides the clothes on the hotplates, nothing seems to have been touched or removed. She’s got an expensive chain from Lynggaard lying on the bureau and quite a lot of cash in her purse.”

  But if somebody had found out who the article had been about, it might qualify as robbery with murderous intent. Camilla had not disguised how much money could be made on high-end prostitution at the height of season.

  Michael shook his head.

  “Then why?” Camilla whispered uncomprehendingly.

  “It looks like revenge or rage. There’s clearly a lot of aggression behind this murder.”

  She turned to him abruptly.

  “But it’s Annette. Nobody hated her.”

  Michael seemed to agree. She could see him contemplating how much he could tell her. Then he cleared his throat.

  “She’s been strangled. The killer wound several nylon stockings around her neck.”

  Camilla looked up.

  “She was lying naked on the bed when we found her. One of her breasts and her stomach were covered in large amounts of blood.”

 
; He made a short pause.

  “The blood came from her right breast, which is missing the entire nipple.”

  “Missing in what way?” Camilla tightened her grip around his arm and felt nauseous.

  Michael looked away, and the wind tousled his blond hair before he faced her again.

  “It looks like…”

  Just then the medical-legal expert came over.

  “The nipple has been bitten off,” he exclaimed. “We’ve got enough tooth marks and DNA traces to be certain we have our man if we find a match.”

  Camilla turned around and threw up.

  Guilt, guilt, guilt, Camilla’s head boomed as she lay in the bed in her old room. Eva sat at the edge of the bed and stroked her back as she had done when Camilla, as a kid, had finally accepted the idea that a new woman had moved into their lives. But that had been a long time ago. Camilla was grown-up and had to own up to her actions, and she had no doubt that she was responsible for what had happened. It wasn’t a coincidence that Annette had been brutally killed within the same week that the article about her lucrative second line of work had been in the paper. Of course it wasn’t a coincidence. It was Camilla’s fault.

  The next morning, the family doctor had ordered a sedative to give her a short break from the guilt raging inside her.

  But the night had been hell. At some point, David had called to ask if he should come back. But when she told him that she needed to be alone for a while, she didn’t hear from him again until he suddenly came barging in, in high spirits, in the wee hours of the morning.

  Usually, Eva was easygoing, but this kind of behavior went beyond the bounds of propriety, so she had resolutely sent him off to the guest annex in the garden with a sleeping bag under his arm.

  Camilla stayed in bed for three days, but the day after the murder she had asked David to find another place to stay. She had neither the room nor the energy to deal with him and his posh friends from Ruth’s Hotel. Not even if he told her that the crown prince had joined the party.

  The funeral took place on Saturday, one week after the murder, and Camilla helped carry the coffin, but otherwise she spent most of her time with her dad in Frederikshavn. When the sun was out, she took him on walks around the hospital garden in his wheelchair. She kept talking and talking, simultaneously chain-smoking and finding calm in the fact that all he could do was listen.

  “Just before I drove down here, Michael dropped by,” she told him. “He didn’t want to say much, other than that they have made an arrest in connection with the homicide.”

  Her dad nodded a couple of times. He was getting better and was able to shake his head. He had also started to eat, as long as someone brought the spoon to his mouth. Camilla unpacked a couple of small strawberry pies while they were sitting in the shade of the trees. She thought she saw him smiling as she told him about her last encounter with David, the day before he left Skagen and their relationship had ended.

  “We’d ordered the full lunch menu,” she said, and greeted one of the other patients whom she remembered seeing in John’s rehabilitation class.

  “But the first course had only just been served when I left. It kind of developed into a farce. David sat and talked about Frederik and Mary, and I sat across from him and talked about Annette. We were communicating on separate frequencies and he didn’t even notice it.”

  Her father nodded again, and Camilla saw the gleam in his eye as she told him how she had tossed a 1000-kroner bill onto the table and left without a word.

  She smiled. For the first time she clearly sensed a connection. Her father was sitting in there as if behind a screen. Without quite acknowledging it, she had been in permanent doubt about how much of him there would be left when the wounds had healed and the stitches in his head had been removed.

  Now she knew that he was there, and she felt the relief flood her body.

  * * *

  “They are positive that in a week’s time he’ll be doing well enough that they can move him to the nursing home and continue the rehabilitation there,” Camilla said that evening when the whole family was seated at the dinner table.

  The pork roast was from Munch, the local butcher, and Anders and Susanne had succeeded in keeping Sofie home so that the family could also enjoy a bit of her company.

  “Why can’t Grandpa just come live with us?” Markus looked uncomprehendingly at his mother.

  “When you’ve been in bed for so long, your muscles get atrophied, and then you need professional help to get them working properly again,” Eva explained, stroking his hair.

  “But he’d rather live here than with the old people in the nursing home,” he insisted.

  “By the way, The Media House from Aarhus called earlier,” Eva said to steer the conversation in another direction. “They wanted to know how things are progressing. We did promise them clarification sometime next week, so it was lovely to be able to tell them that Dad is making so much progress; it’d be best if we could have his counsel. I promised them that we’d be ready to start the final negotiations. But they’re still not interested in the printing house.” She looked around at her grown-up children.

  “To be honest, I don’t think you can send our grandpa off to the nursing home, either! Do you only think about yourselves or what? It sure won’t be nice for him to live there.”

  The outburst was so violent that everybody turned to look at Sofie, who hid behind her raven black hair which almost covered her made-up eyes and the little ring in her nose.

  “We don’t have a hospital bed for him to sleep in. And don’t forget that I haven’t got a driver’s license, so I can’t drive him back and forth myself,” Eva said and looked at her grandchildren.

  “Maybe we can borrow a hospital bed,” Camilla said hesitantly. “That’s not unheard of. Then we could drive him.” She moved her gaze to Tina and Anders, who both nodded.

  “We’ll just make arrangements so that we can all take turns. That shouldn’t be a problem,” Tina agreed, and suddenly Camilla could see that there was something about her stepsister that had changed. Something that made her lighter and a couple of shades happier.

  * * *

  The plans for moving John home were in full swing when Camilla’s cell phone started ringing on the coffee table.

  “Did you ever hear Annette talk about a contractor from Vejle?” Michael asked on the phone.

  “No. Someone I should know?” she asked and took the phone into the kitchen, where she would not be disturbed.

  “It’s the guy we arrested earlier today and are charging with the killing. It turns out that he was one of her regular customers. We found his name in her calendar, and from this it appears that they saw each other regularly three times a week during the summer months when he stayed in Skagen.”

  Camilla fetched her cigarettes while listening.

  “He also admits to having been with her during the night and morning of the day her mother found her dead in the summer house.”

  Camilla pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. She lit a cigarette and felt an unexpected sense of calm spread through her body. The certainty that the perpetrator was a regular customer took away some of her own feelings of guilt and made a little bit of room in the part of her body where she had felt leaden since the killing. She exhaled. She had just slumped back in the chair with relief when Michael continued.

  “He doesn’t have an alibi, and everything points to him. Still, we’ve had to release him again just now.”

  “Why the hell would you let the man walk, if everything fits in?” she exclaimed and immediately felt the iron grip of guilt begin to tighten again.

  “Because his lawyer turned up late in the afternoon with the man’s dental record. The bite marks on Annette’s breast don’t match the suspect’s set of teeth.”

  7

  Camilla remained seated in the kitchen after Michael ended the call. The smoke from her cigarette slowly drifted toward the open kitchen window.

  Back in
the living room, people were starting to leave. Anders was already in the hallway, calling out to his family. She watched them through the door.

  Sofie had changed so much behind the thick, black hair and the heavy eye makeup. The last time Camilla had been back, her niece had been a smiling, happy fourteen-year-old with her long, blond hair tied up in a ponytail. Now it was cut and colored, and the girl seemed sullen and withdrawn. Camilla felt like giving her a hug, but instead simply looked at her while Anders kissed his mom good-bye.

  * * *

  “But he didn’t bite off her nipple.” Michael tried to defend himself the next morning, when Camilla barged into his small office and demanded an explanation. She hadn’t slept a wink, and thoughts were swirling around in her head.

  “This is confidential,” he began and pointed to a chair. “What made us arrest him is the fact that the man lives at Ruth’s Hotel every summer for two months. In that period, he’s usually with Annette three times a week.”

  Camilla quickly calculated that her friend had netted an amount close to 250,000 kroner per month, tax-free.

  “But when he’s admitted to being with her, you can’t just let him go because of his fucking dental record,” she shouted across the table, frustrated.

  Michael continued:

  “Our CSI techs secured some pretty good bite marks from Annette’s breast, and we can tell that a big piece of the tooth next to the right front tooth is missing. The suspect doesn’t have that kind of dental injury. And we won’t get him into custody on the basis of what we have. We need more evidence to support our suspicion.”

  “What about fingerprints?” Camilla asked. “And DNA?”

  “The examinations are under way, and right now we’re waiting for the results. But the perpetrator was smart enough to remove his fingerprints, and that tallies with his clumsy attempt to burn down the summerhouse. He’s tried to obliterate all traces.”

  * * *

  Camilla was in a bad mood when she reached SkagensPosten. She nodded curtly to the two painters’ assistants who were working in the storeroom, where the fire had destroyed the walls.