Irene nodded and decided to drop the subject. Even if both Irene and her boss had worked with murders and murderers for many years, there were still some things that were worse than others.
B Y CHANCE Irene had happened to see the announcement in
The twins had their own activities after school. Jenny was very musical and played both guitar and flute. She also sang in two choirs. Today, flute practice was on the schedule. Katarina had a good chance of winning this year’s Junior National Championship in judo since she had won the year before. Irene herself had become European Champion almost twenty years ago. At that time she was the only woman in Scandinavia who had a black belt, third dan.
Sammie was sitting just inside the door and welcomed her with big leaps of joy. That was the advantage of having a dog, thought Irene. It was happy no matter what time of day you came home.
She barely had time to take off her jacket before the phone rang.
“Irene Huss here.”
“Hi, Irene. This is Monika Lind. Do you remember me?”
It took a second for Irene to go through her memory bank to find Monika Lind, but she managed in the end.
“Of course. We were neighbors for a few years. But hasn’t it been four or five years since you moved to Trollhattan?”
“To Vanersborg. Five years ago.”
Monika Lind’s daughter, Isabell, was one year older than the twins. The girls had played together when they were younger, but when the Lind family moved all the way to Vanersborg the contact faded and finally stopped completely. Irene wondered what her former neighbor might want from her.
“It’s about Isabell. The police don’t care and I have to speak with a sensible police officer!”
Monika’s voice broke at the last sentence, and Irene realized, to her consternation, that Monika had begun to sob. Irene tried to use a calming tone of voice. “What is it that’s happened? Has Isabell gotten into trouble with the police?”
“No, but she’s gone! I’ve looked for her. . but no one cares!”
Heavy weeping could be heard again.
“Monika, please. Try and start from the beginning.”
It was quiet for a while. Irene understood that Monika was making a real effort to calm down. She started speaking in a shaky voice. “Isabell started her second year in the social studies program in the fall. But she didn’t get on well. She has always had a hard time finding her place at high school. She won a beauty contest last summer and after that she wanted only one thing. . to become a photo model. A photographer here in the city took some very nice pictures of her that cost a fortune. . but she really wanted it.”
Monika Lind became silent again. Irene could hear her breathing and she knew how difficult it must be for Monika to talk about this.
“Everything stopped at Christmas. She refused to continue going to high school. She said that she had picked the wrong track and wanted to start the mass media program in the fall. And she had also had contact with a modeling agency in Copenhagen.”
Irene jumped in. “How did she get in touch with the agency?”
“Through an ad. They were looking for Swedish girls who were willing to work in Copenhagen.”
“What’s the name of the agency?”
“Scandinavian Models. She got in touch with a female photographer named Jytte Pedersen. I actually spoke with her on the phone twice before Bell left. The agency arranged the trip and the apartment and-” Monika’s voice broke again and she wept in despair.
“She rented her own apartment in Copenhagen?”
“No. She shares one with two other girls. One from Oslo named Linn and one from Malmo named Petra.”
“Where is the apartment located? In what part of Copenhagen?” Irene had only been to Copenhagen once in her life in the last year of high school. Her memories were a bit blurry, probably due in large part to the good, cheap Danish beer and to the distance from watchful parental eyes.
“It’s just next to Frihamnen. Ostbanegade is the name of the street.”
“You’ve never visited her?”
“Yes, no. Not her. . I wanted to go down and visit during the break in February. The disadvantage of being a teacher is that I only have vacation during school breaks. My husband promised to take care of Elin. . You might remember that I was pregnant when we moved to Vanersborg. Isabell has a little sister who is almost five. Rather, a half sister. But then Bell didn’t want me to come because they were busy renovating the apartment. Then I wanted to come over Easter but she said that she had so much work. She was going to travel to London for some photo shoots and so on. Increasingly I got the feeling that she didn’t want me to come. The girls didn’t have a phone in the apartment so Bell would always call us. I wrote at least once a week.”
“How often did she call?”
“Usually once a week. A few times it might have been ten days between calls.”
“When did you last hear from her?”
“She called one evening in the middle of March. Janne answered the phone. I had parent-teacher meetings.”
“What did she say?”
“Not very much. As I said, it was Janne who answered the phone.”
“How is the relationship between Isabell and your husband?”
A loud sigh could be heard. “As you know, there were already problems when we were living in Fiskeback. Bell was eleven when Janne and I met. Because contact with her father had been irregular since the divorce, it had only been the two of us for five years. And then Janne came and got between us. You must remember all of the times she ran away and came to your house and you weren’t allowed to say where she was because she wanted me to worry.”
“You don’t think it could be something like that this time? She is staying away so that you’ll start to worry. . ”
“That’s exactly what the police in both Sweden and Denmark want me to think! They don’t believe that she’s disappeared!”
“She’s disappeared? What do you mean?”
“She isn’t in Copenhagen! All of April went by and I didn’t hear anything from her. The Thursday before Walpurgis Night Eve I took the day off and went down to Copenhagen. First I went to Bell’s address. You have no idea what a seedy-looking hovel it was! A big dirty apartment building next to Sondre Frihavn. I went up the stairs to the landing where Bell supposedly lived but there was no apartment with three girls as roommates. Of course I knocked and asked all the tenants who were home. No one had seen or heard anything about those three girls.”
Monika paused. “Finally, I got ahold of a phone book and started searching for modeling agencies and photographers. There’s no modeling agency called Scandinavian Models, and there’s no photographer named Jytte Pedersen. I went to all of the photographers and agencies I could find. I had a picture of Bell with me that I showed them. None of the photographers had seen her. Then it was the weekend so I went home. But I reported Bell as missing to the Danish police before I left.”
Her voice cut off again and Irene had to wait a long time. In the meantime, she jotted down notes on a pad hanging on the wall by the phone.
Monika snuffled and continued in an unsteady voice. “They were. . laughing! They didn’t think it was alarming that a seventeen-year-old had disappeared in Copenhagen. According to them, that kind of thing happens every day. Young girls run away from their parents in order to experience the big city. Apparently completely normal! They said that all the police could do was post a description and see if she popped up in connection with some other case.
