Only One Life: A Novel Part 12

Suddenly things made sense, and she had to smile.

"The Rowing Club is behind Hotel Strandparken," Mik said on his way out the door.

She waved after him, but her cell phone rang just then; and when she saw that it was Camilla, she pushed the office door shut a little with her foot before answering.

"I don't think we'll be working that late tonight," Louise answered after her friend asked if she had an estimate for when she'd be done.

"There's a restaurant down by the harbor that looks promising. Let's meet there at eight. I'll have my articles turned in by then," Camilla said. "Maybe some of the others would like to join us. You guys can't keep hanging out at the Station Hotel, and it's usually pretty easy to tempt Soren Velin into tagging along."

Louise had no doubt he could be tempted. When they'd worked together in Unit A, Soren had been known as a joiner. She headed down the hall to find him and hadn't even finished talking before he'd suggested they start with a beer at the brewpub before heading to dinner. Skipper stopped as he walked by and asked what time they were meeting.

"Who's going to convince Bengtsen?" Louise asked, heading down the hall to see if Dean had left yet.

"I will," said Ruth, who had appeared in the hallway without Louise's noticing her.

Suddenly Louise had the impression that the prospect of a little socializing had improved everyone's mood. They'd all been buried in work since the group had been formed. Now people's voices sounded more upbeat.

They all had more than one beer at the little brewpub, which was in walking distance from the hotel, and when they made it down to the nice restaurant by the harbor they agreed it probably wasn't the best fit for them. They were well past the point where appetizers and quiet conversation were what they wanted. So they decided on a nearby Indian restaurant instead. The group was a little too big for the one table that was available, so they all had to squeeze to fit, but that didn't seem to bother anyone. Not even Bengtsen, who had ordered an orange soda at the brewpub to begin with, although that had only lasted until Camilla stuck a foamy draft beer into his hand.

Louise sat crushed between Skipper and Soren, and she was well entertained because Skipper pulled his iPod out of his pocket and started showing off his knowledge of fusion jazz. She listened with concentration, trying to hear the tranquillity in the notes, but kept getting thrown off because the music kept switching tempo and style. She noticed that he smiled whenever she grimaced periodically.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

She felt like she'd been caught and shrugged her shoulders a little.

He said a lot of people felt that way about this kind of music; they either loved it or hated it. The people who loved it took pleasure in the unpredictable notes, and the ones who weren't captivated described it as irritating noise. He explained that he'd been in a band when he was younger.

"Now we just mess around for fun, whenever I get together with a couple of the other old guys back home in Svendborg."

Louise turned to look straight at him and really had a hard time picturing him with a saxophone in his mouth. Skipper was in his mid-thirties and in great shape, muscular in an outdoorsy way. It was much easier to picture him with a golf club or a fis.h.i.+ng pole, now that she thought about it.

Soren ordered another bottle of red wine while Ruth and Camilla made Dean retell a story that had made them erupt in raucous laughter, so that everyone else could hear it too.

"Shortly after I arrived in Denmark, I was living in a refugee center in Lyngby," Dean began, getting everyone's attention. "And if I have anything funny to say about that period it was that we discovered that on the door to the boss's office it said Peder Pedersen. Because where I come from, Peder means gay. So you can appreciate why all the kids laughed every time they saw him and the rest of us had a little trouble taking the head of the refugee center seriously. The guy resigned after just two weeks."

The laughter spread around the table and Soren generously refilled people's winegla.s.ses.

When they were having coffee after dinner, Ruth got a call from Storm, who had just returned to the Station Hotel. For a second it sounded like he was considering joining the party, but that was only until Ruth made it clear to him in succinct, unambiguous terms how irritated she was that he hadn't been there doing his job when they'd needed him.

Louise followed the conversation from the other side of the table and smiled, thinking that it must have taken years of working together closely for Ruth to achieve such a sharp tone without his taking it the wrong way. Louise was yanked out of her musings when Skipper spoke to her.

"So, are you happy with Unit A and Suhr?"

As she nodded, she reminded him that he too had worked in Unit A once upon a time. "But that was many years ago," he said. "A long time before Hans Suhr became chief of the homicide division. He and I worked together back near the dawn of time at Station 3, or Bellahoj, as they call it now."

Well, she supposed it shouldn't surprise her that Skipper and Captain Suhr knew each other. They were sort of the same caliber of men even though it was hard to spot a gruff side to Skipper. But maybe that was because she didn't really know him yet.

"I've been there three and a half years and so far, so good," she replied, explaining that she was in Henny Heilmann's group.

Skipper knew her too, of course, and told Louise a couple of anecdotes, ending with a story about Thomas Toft, who had seniority on the investigation team Louise was currently part of. She laughed out loud when Skipper called him a stubborn terrier who wouldn't let go once he'd bitten into something, because that was the perfect image.

After coffee, they split the bill and got up to go check out Holbaek's night life. Dean and Soren led the way, heading back to the brewpub, where they had live music, and Louise gladly accepted the pints Skipper pa.s.sed across the table to her each time he returned from a trip to the bar. As she let herself into her hotel room a couple of hours later, she noticed she had gotten a bit tipsier than she had realized, and it didn't take many minutes from the time she lay down in bed until sleep overcame her.

16.

CAMILLA WAS LYING IN HER HOTEL ROOM READING THROUGH HER own article in Morgenavisen. They'd been out late the night before, and they had had plenty of beer and wine with their food. That had been nice. Bengtsen had stubbornly denied that he'd let Else down on a Friday night because of Ruth's special persuasive abilities. He had insisted to Camilla that he was very social as long as the company was right, so she'd taken it as a compliment that he'd chosen her as a tablemate, and she made sure he was aware that in the future she would include him on her list of police sources.

The paper was featuring her story prominently, with a set of statistics on recent honor killings. She'd hoped all the way up until her deadline that Samra's mother would show up so she could interview her, but as much as she had hoped for that, she was also very sure that it wouldn't happen. And it certainly wouldn't happen now that her boss had thoughtlessly rewritten the headline for the article Camilla had written about the mother's visit to the women's shelter. SAMRA'S MOTHER FAILED HER, it now said, and with those words her last chance of an interview disintegrated, Camilla thought angrily.

Camilla felt rotten about the headline. Something in the pit of her stomach contracted when the words jumped out at her. Plus there was no way she could retract it, since the t.i.tle promised quite a bit more than the article actually contained. She had carefully described the police report about the father and how Sada had sought help. That was all information she'd gotten from the police. It wasn't like she'd been poking around to find that out on her own, and nowhere in the article did she suggest that the mother had failed her daughter and that this had cost the girl her life.

Camilla had spent most of her Friday afternoon trying to find someone who would talk to her about their impressions of Sada al-Abd, both as a mother and a wife. It was hard to get anyone to talk, but she had finally managed to find two other immigrant women who dared to speak to her, and they had been very positive and had told her in their limited Danish how she devoted all her time to her children, especially the two little ones. On the other hand, when Camilla brought up the spousal abuse Samra's mother had been subjected to, the two women shut down. Either they didn't know anything about it or, more likely, they dared not get involved in that kind of thing. That was something you kept in the family.

Camilla quickly skimmed through the rest of the paper, and was lazily lounging around in her hotel bed when the phone in the room rang. She tripped over her suitcase as she darted to answer it. She had packed her things before breakfast and was planning to head back into Copenhagen later that morning.

"There's a guest in the lobby who'd really like to speak with you," the person at the front desk said.

"Is it Louise Rick?" Camilla asked.

"It's a foreign woman who says she needs to speak to you."

Camilla felt herself trembling and sensed instinctively that something unpleasant was coming.

"I'll be right down," she said and put on her shoes.

The woman was sitting in the large dark-brown armchair to the left of the front desk. Her face was hidden behind the same veil Camilla recognized from the day before. Camilla took a deep breath and straightened herself up before walking over and saying h.e.l.lo.

There was a girl manning the front desk, one she hadn't seen before, and Camilla noticed that she was watching them with curiosity.

"Come," Camilla told Samra's mother, nodding toward the restaurant. "Let's find somewhere where we can talk in peace."

She said it so loudly that the girl behind the desk quickly looked away.

Sada al-Abd still hadn't said a word, but she rose and followed Louise. The restaurant was empty. All the same, Camilla asked the waiter cleaning up after breakfast if there was a place where she and Sada could speak undisturbed. He showed them into something that might have been the hotel's conference room, although it did not look as if it was used very often. There was a heavy, stuffy odor in the room and a layer of dust over the rectangular rosewood table that filled the room lengthwise.

When the waiter left, shutting the door behind him, Camilla turned to Sada, ready to take whatever the woman was going to dish out.

"You mustn't write things like that," Sada exclaimed in despair.

Camilla was completely unprepared for how loud Sada was and pulled back reflexively.

"How could you do that?" Sada stepped toward her and started crying loudly and shrilly, as if she were pus.h.i.+ng out the pain from all the way down in her diaphragm.

Camilla stepped back farther, now standing silently and watching Sada, until she sensed that the rebukes were over. When she saw Sada collapse into quiet, miserable sobs, Camilla put her arm around her shoulders and led her over to a seating area by the far wall.

Once Sada was seated, Camilla stepped out into the restaurant and asked the waiter to bring them some tea. Then she sat down across from Samra's mother and let her cry. When the tea finally arrived after a long wait, the woman was still crying.

Camilla felt the knot in her stomach again, but didn't want to admit it was there. Her article had been restrained, but she felt a fierce rage at her boss and the sloppy way he came up with headlines. Besides, it never cost him anything, but that d.a.m.n well wasn't the case for her. Here she was, sitting across from the woman they'd maligned who very obviously couldn't take any more pain.

Camilla poured tea into two large floral teacups copied from the best of traditional English style and pa.s.sed one to Sada in the hopes that it would distract her from her crying.

Sada reluctantly accepted it, avoiding eye contact with Camilla as if she was ashamed of her angry outburst. After she took her first sip, she finally said something: "I have always taken good care of my children."

Camilla was about to speak when, after a long pause, Sada continued.

"Now they're going to take my children away. But what do you care? You don't understand," she said, wringing her hands together.

Not caring was not Camilla's problem at the moment. Her boss had sold her out, and it was going to cost him. But she actually did care about Sada too, although she was irritated that the woman hadn't come to see her until now that the article was already written and printed instead of the day before so they could have talked to each other beforehand. At any rate, Camilla began by defending herself in a way that could easily be interpreted as an attack.

"No one needs to understand or accept anyone being abused to the point that they have to go to a women's shelter," Camilla said. She knew this might put an end to the woman's willingness to talk, but on the other hand she felt it was necessary to indicate where she stood.

But her statement didn't seem to bother Sada al-Abd. The woman just shook her head. There was obviously something else Camilla didn't understand.

"Try to explain to me what led up to your going to the shelter. What I especially want you to explain to me is why you went back to him," Camilla said.

"Why should I?" Sada asked. "You're just going to write whatever you want anyway."

Camilla had certainly heard that one many times before.

"You wrote that I killed my own daughter." Sada spoke quietly with a determination in her voice. The tears were gone and she seemed almost fearsome.

"I didn't write that you killed her," Camilla exclaimed indignantly, wis.h.i.+ng that instead of accusing her, the mother would start talking. "I wrote that you went to a shelter for help and that shortly after that, you went back to your abuser."

Camilla took a sip of tea and again asked Samra's mother to talk about what had happened when she went into hiding with her children.

Sada drank a little more of her tea and it looked as if she were fighting some kind of battle within herself. Camilla had the sense that the woman across from her really wanted to tell her story, but that she was afraid it might have consequences if she did so.

"I won't write anything until you've given me permission," Camilla said. "And I'll let you read through it before it goes to print."

That was really all she could offer Sada, but it seemed to have an effect.

"My husband got mad at Hamid, our older son," Sada began. "Hamid didn't want to hand over some money he'd earned, and that made Ibrahim so mad, he started hitting."

Camilla sat on the edge of the sofa, listening. She had brought her bag down with her, and she pulled out a notepad and started taking notes. Sada didn't seem to notice and kept talking.

"He was. .h.i.tting Hamid hard, and I tried to stop him."

"You fled with your children because you tried to come between your husband and your son?" Camilla stated in surprise, a little shaken. She knew that Hamid had not gone to the shelter with the other children.

The woman nodded.

"If it was your son Ibrahim was mad at, why were you the one who had to flee?"

"Samra was also yelling at her father and defending her brother. My husband can get very angry. He lashed out with his hands many times and said he would kill the little ones if I got involved again."

"And did you?"

"No, but he hit Samra to show that he meant it."

"Didn't he threaten to kill Hamid?"

Sada looked directly at Camilla and maintained the eye contact for a long time.

"He would never kill his eldest son," she finally said.

Camilla had her notepad in her lap and sat for a bit, gathering her thoughts. She bent her head back to stop the s.h.i.+vers that were running up and down her spine.

"So you reported him to the police and you all got out of there?"

Sada nodded.

"How could you go back to a man who had threatened to kill your children?" Now she set down the pad, sensing how the room seemed to close in as she asked her question. "Why?"

Tears began to flow down Sada's cheeks once more. She cried a little without a sound. "Loneliness," she finally whispered so softly that Camilla had to lean forward to hear her. "If I had left him, we would have had no one. I might have been okay, but it wouldn't have worked for the children. Our lives would have been shut out." "What do you mean?" Camilla asked. "You would have been free."

The thin woman shook her head. "Freedom is not the same for me as for you."

Camilla sat motionless.

"I would rather be home with my husband than be free and lonely."

Camilla didn't understand what she meant.

"Why would you be more lonely when you weren't with a man who would hit you?" Camilla asked.

"If you don't belong anywhere anymore, then you have no one. Then no one will talk to you. You don't get invited anywhere. The children are not allowed to play with other children, and there's not even any guarantee you will get to keep your last name. You will be totally alone, an outcast."

Camilla was speechless at the way Sada rattled this all off, as if it had come straight from some kind of list of rules.

"Who says all that?" Camilla asked.

For the first time a glint came into Sada's eye that could have been mistaken for a small smile.

"It's not something anyone says. That's just how it is, and how it has always been for those who bring shame to their families."

"Yeah, but you darn well can't avoid things happening in a family that will make waves, and you don't necessarily have to become an outcast because of it," Camilla said heatedly. It wasn't that she hadn't heard of honor and shame before, but this all sounded completely crazy to her ears.

Sada sat for a moment before responding, as if she were searching for the right words.

"It's only in the closest family that honor and shame really mean something. If it's someone you don't know, who cares? Then it doesn't mean anything."