“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 Malmö 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. Østbanegade 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 Vänersborg. 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 Fiskebäck. 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 Søndre 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.”