let go for a while. Finally he interrupted brusquely. “I know. It’s been a while. But I’m calling to ask you for information. A friend of mine is concerned. Word has it that a young Swedish girl may have disappeared at the Aurora . . . yesterday around midnight . . . tall and blonde ...yes, an escort service . . . she’s called Bell.”
He pulled the receiver from his ear and asked, “What was the customer’s name?”
“Simon Steiner.”
“Apparently a German. Simon Steiner,” said Tom.
He sat quietly for almost two minutes before the jabbering started again on the other end of the line. Tom nodded a few times and hummed. Irene thought she heard a faintly surprised tone in his voice. After a few words of thanks and an assurance that they would see each other again soon, Tom put down the receiver.
“That’s remarkable. My contact says that there isn’t and hasn’t been any Simon Steiner at the hotel. But maybe he gave the escort service a false name. And it doesn’t seem as though anyone has seen Isabell either. He will ask the night porter when he comes in later tonight.”
“I can’t say that I’m relieved. Now I’m really worried. Where can she be?” said Irene.
“No idea. Could she have been led into a trap?”
“Possibly. But why?”
Tom looked at her. Slowly, he said, “We’ll have to go back to what we said a little while ago. The connection between the murder of Marcus and the girl’s disappearance. You.”
Irene’s throat became completely dry despite the fact that she had just taken a sip of beer. When she finally got a few words out, her tongue grated against her palate like sandpaper.
“Me? What do you mean?”
“The way I see it, little Isabell was alive and well until you showed up and started asking about her. Someone found out and decided to send you a warning. Kidnap her . . . maybe something worse. But I don’t think it’s because of Isabell or her profession. It has to do with the real reason you came to Copenhagen. The murder-mutilations.”
“There are only three people here in Copenhagen that I’ve spoken to about Isabell.”
“Three police officers.”
It wasn’t a question but a statement. Irene nodded. Tom fished a little notebook out of a desk drawer and said, “Can I have their names?”
Irene gave them to him. Tom wrote them down and then looked at the paper for a long time before he said, “No. The names don’t say anything to me. Except Bentsen, of course. Emil Bentsen’s mother!”
He snorted loudly, Something told Irene that Emil was going to get an earful next time he saw Tom.
“It seems as though ‘Simon Steiner’ has taken Isabell somewhere, and Copenhagen is enormous. I promised to contact her friend Petra at Scandinavian Models. The best thing is to convince her to report Isabell’s disappearance to the police,” said Irene.
She cast a glance at the clock and realized that it was time to go. She had almost five hours of driving and a ferry ride ahead of her. They each rose at the same time. Tom led her out of the workroom, through the short corridor, and into the bedroom. He stopped in front of the door with the safety locks. They took each other’s hands and Tom said, “We’ll stay in touch by cell phone.”
“Yes. Thanks for all the help.”
“No problem.”
THE CAR was parked outside the strip club where she had left it on arriving in Copenhagen. There were barely fifteen minutes left on her twenty-four-hour parking ticket. Had she really been gone only one day? It had been an intense and eventful one. Now she just wanted to get home.
It was easier to find one’s way out of Copenhagen than in, but somewhere before Hellerup she must have taken a wrong turn because the road suddenly became narrower. The big dirty brick houses disappeared and were replaced by low white rental houses made of stone-covered white plaster, interspersed with a well-cared-for-villa here and there. The rental houses disappeared and were replaced by larger and larger residences the farther north she drove. On the right side of the car she saw water and she understood that she had ended up on Strandvejen. High walls and hedges enclosed parklike yards. What could be seen of the stately houses was impressive, which was obviously the point.
After a few kilometers Irene realized that the road she was traveling on was a border, economically speaking. The houses on the right side of the