Authors: Sara Blædel
Call Me Princess
ME
PRINCESS
CALL
ME
PRINCESS
SARA BLAEDEL
PEGASUS CRIME
NEW YORK
For my brother, Jeppe.
ME
PRINCESS
Contents
1
T
HE PAIN CUT INTO HER WRISTS, AND SHE COULDN’T REACT BECAUSE
her hands were tied so tightly behind her back. Terrified, she turned her face toward him. The blow struck so hard that it hammered her head down into the bedding, rebounding back up for the next blow. She opened her mouth to scream; but before the sound could come out, her mouth was blocked by something hard. The duct tape he stuck over her mouth made her feel like she was wearing a mask.
The candles were still lit in the living room. The bottle of wine and the glasses were sitting on the coffee table. Blood trickled down along her nose as she stared at the glow from the candlelight, her head turned to the side, and she thought about the restaurant and their three-course meal just a few hours before.
He had ordered calvados to go with their coffee, without asking her if she liked it, so she hadn’t needed to admit that she didn’t know what it was. They held hands over the table.
Pain shot through her as he cinched her ankles together tightly. Something hard chewed into the flesh right above her ankle bone.
Later they had danced in the living room. Very close. He had held her face in both his hands and kissed her.
Dear God in heaven, help me!
The blood kept flowing, and she struggled to get the air in through her nose. She concentrated on her aim as she lifted her bound legs and tried to kick him off the edge of the bed. He was sitting with his back to her but managed to turn around and parry her feet. Another blow from his fist bruised her cheek and temple.
“Lie still now and nothing will happen.”
He held on to her firmly and angrily shoved her bound legs to the side.
His clothes were on the chair next to the wardrobe. Her own lay in a messy heap on the floor by the end of the bed. Piece by piece, he had asked her to undress slowly.
The left side of her face throbbed. The quiet music played on in the living room. Her fear felt like an iron grip around her gut.
She cried from pain and shame. Buried her face and body down into the soft comforter and wished it would swallow her up. Her tears mixed with the blood as he pulled her out over the edge of the bed so that only her upper body was resting on the mattress. The world and reality exploded as he shoved himself into her with a violent thrust.
The tightly adhering tape held her scream back. She fought to keep her nose free of the bed and struggled to inhale calmly, but she kept getting thrown out of rhythm by the pain, which threatened to destroy her. Her body began to relax, as a fog slowly shrouded the pain and she lost consciousness.
T
HERE WAS A SLIGHT CLICK AS SHE PRESSED THE SWITCH, AND A
second later the glass door to the emergency ward swung open. She walked quickly, her eyes trained on the floor. Out of the corner of one eye she noticed family members sitting and talking softly together. A lab technician wheeled a phlebotomy cart out of one of the exam rooms, and she only barely avoided crashing into him.
She said “Sorry” in passing and hurried past the glass windows surrounding the nurses’ station, over to the reception desk.
“Assistant Detective Louise Rick, Copenhagen P.D., Unit A,” she said, introducing herself. “Whom should I be talking to?”
A young nurse stood up and smiled at her. “Just a second—I’ll page the doctor. Why don’t you take a seat for a minute.” She pointed toward the white oval table covered in coffee-cup stains and crumbs from people’s afternoon snacks.
Louise removed her sunglasses from where they’d been perched atop her dark hair and set them on the table, and watched the nurse page the doctor. Louise clasped her hands behind her head and exhaled heavily. She had grouchily struggled her way through rush-hour traffic along Kalvebod Wharf and Folehaven, swatting the steering wheel a number of times in frustration when traffic ground to a standstill. It had taken an unusually long time to drive just six miles from the Copenhagen police headquarters out to Hvidovre Hospital.
—
I
T HAD BEEN NEARLY FIVE O’CLOCK WHEN THE HEAD OF THE HOMICIDE
division, Lieutenant Hans Suhr, came into her office. She was writing out her list of things she needed to buy at the store on the way home; but when she saw the look in Suhr’s eyes, she pushed her notepad aside and prepared to call Peter and ask him to pick up the groceries instead. Peter had suggested as much himself that morning as he drove her to work, but she had optimistically dismissed the idea, saying it would be no problem, she could run the errands for once.
“There’s been a rape, and a brutal one at that. I want you to go check it out,” Suhr said, sitting down on the hard wooden chair next to her desk.
Before he could continue, Louise pulled her notepad over again and tore off her shopping list. Lieutenant Suhr often called her in on rape cases; as it usually went over better to have a woman to take the victim’s statement, and as there weren’t that many of them in the division, the cases generally landed on her desk.
“The victim’s been taken to Hvidovre,” he’d said after she had her ballpoint pen ready. “She’s a thirty-two-year-old woman from Valby. Her mother, who lives in the apartment upstairs, came down to her daughter’s place at dinnertime and found her in the bedroom, gagged, with her hands tied behind her back. There was blood on the bed, and the daughter was nearly unconscious from the ordeal.”
The lieutenant seemed to be considering whether or not there was anything else he ought to add. Then he said, “The mother took the duct tape off her mouth before calling the ambulance.”
Louise studied him as he spoke, trying to prepare herself for how ugly it would be, whatever she was going to see. The fact that the victim had been hogtied and gagged was enough for the downtown precinct to have contacted Unit A, and the victim’s condition automatically classified the rape as aggravated battery.
“Susanne Hansson lives alone; and when the police arrived at the scene, the mother said that her daughter did not have a boyfriend or any friends she would have been sleeping with voluntarily.”
Louise furrowed her brow. “What does the rape victim herself say?” she asked.
Suhr shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing. The precinct detectives tried when they got to Hvidovre, but they didn’t get anything out of her. One of the female doctors has spoken with her a little since then, but I don’t know how much she found out. Other than that the victim wants to report the rape. You’ll have to talk to her, and then she’ll have to go to National Hospital and be examined.”
Louise nodded, satisfied that she would have a chance to build up some rapport with the woman before they arrived at the Center for Victims of Sexual Assault downtown. Her experiences with previous aggravated rape cases told her that if Susanne had been roughed up as much as Suhr suggested, it would probably just traumatize her more to have to undergo the coroner’s exam that same night. It would be good if they had an opportunity to establish a rapport before that, so the woman had a chance to feel at least a tiny bit secure again.
“What’s her current condition?”
“Go find out,” Suhr said. “I’m sending Jørgensen out to the woman’s apartment on Lyshøj Allé. The crime-scene investigators are already there. Call once you have a rundown on what happened.” He slapped his hand on her desk in closure, then got up and left her office.
Louise flung her jean jacket over her arm and glanced quickly at the stacks of paperwork on her desk. On her way to her lead investigator’s office, where the squad-car signout book was kept, she managed to get herself all worked up, worrying about what she would do if all the cars were already checked out and how then she’d have to go over to the garage and suck up to Svendsen. But no, thankfully there were two cars available. She grabbed a key and signed one out in the book. Silly to have worried about such a small thing, she thought as she headed down the stairs two at a time.
—
“S
HE’S ON HER WAY NOW,” THE NURSE SAID AS SHE HUNG UP THE
phone.
Louise thanked her and stood up. She stuffed her sunglasses in her pocket and pulled out her lip balm.
“Hi, I’m Anne-Birgitte,” said a young doctor with gold-colored wire-rim glasses. Her hand was cool and her handshake firm, her long hair worn up on the back of her head.
Louise felt sweaty and disheveled compared to the doctor, and she compensated by making her voice sharper and more detached than necessary. “How much has she told you?” Louise asked, instead of introducing herself, noting with chagrin the doctor’s reaction. The woman’s cooperative expression changed, but by then it was too late for Louise to change her more aggressive tack.
“Enough to know that it may be too soon to allow her to be questioned by the police.”
They stared into each other’s eyes, and Louise sensed a little bubble of respect forming and making its way up through her body. She let it radiate from her eyes just long enough for the woman facing her to be able to tell she was backing down.
“It’s great that you got her to report it to the police,” Louise said, flashing her a smile as the tension eased.
“If you have time, why don’t I just fill you in on what I’ve jotted down in her case notes?”
They sat down next to each other, and Anne-Birgitte skimmed the loose pages she had brought with her as she spoke.
“Her hands and feet were tied behind her back with strong plastic straps,” she said, then stopped reading and explained that they were the kind you would use to tie cables together or that the police used as disposable handcuffs.
“The ambulance guys cut them off before they brought her in, and the mother had already removed the duct tape that was covering her mouth. Her blood pressure was low, and we were able to ascertain that she was also suffering from dehydration, so we started a glucose drip, which is already helping. She’s starting to come to.”
The doctor finished, pushed the chart aside, and sat expectantly, ready to answer the detective’s questions.
Louise nodded and tried to remember what else Lieutenant Suhr had said, and which other questions she still needed answers to.
“There was blood,” she began. “How badly hurt is she?”
“Ms. Hansson sustained some violent blows to the face, which have bled a fair amount, and it appears there was some abdominal bleeding, but that’s stopped. I haven’t done a pelvic exam; that won’t be done until she gets to National Hospital.”
“How much has she told you?”
Anne-Birgitte spoke hesitantly. “Not so much. She’s quite distressed, and either she doesn’t want to say anything or she can’t remember what happened. To begin with, she wouldn’t even confirm that there had been a crime. But obviously there’s no doubt about that.”
Louise noticed the doctor purse her lips to show that in her opinion, there was no doubt that a crime had been committed.
Crime?
Louise wrote, moving her hand over the paper to hide what she’d written. “Do you know if she knew her assailant?” she asked.