Bjørn threw his arms out. “Are you asking me that, Carl? You’re the ones who have submitted the reports.”
“Then you damn well haven’t registered them properly.”
“Well, opinion is divided on that matter, as you might well imagine. To deal with this unfortunate situation, I recommend that you lay off Rose Knudsen and that I move Gordon to my team, while you and Assad also move up here. Then we can see if you two can cope with a regime like ours that works in accordance with the law.”
He smiled, probably aware that as far as this was concerned, Carl was certainly not going to follow orders. So what was his game?
“Once again, Carl, I am sorry. But the police commissioner has already reported to the judicial committee, so the decision is out of my hands.”
Carl looked at his superior suspiciously. Had the man taken a course with the state department in delegating responsibility? Goddamn it, didn’t Bjørn know better than to dance with those incompetent losers who only knew how to scratch the surface rather than find out what lay beneath it?
“But listen, Carl, if you are so dissatisfied, then complain to the politicians,” he said in conclusion.
Carl was furious, slamming the door so hard that the whole floor shook, causing Mrs. Sørensen’s jaw to drop along with the papers she had just taken from the desk.
“You two!” he shouted toward her and Lis, who was shredding papers. “Are you the ones who have submitted the wrong stats from us and are now in the process of killing off our department?”
They shook their heads in confusion.
He slammed down Bjørn’s memo in front of them. “Have you written this?”
Lis leaned her pretty chest in toward the counter. “Yes, I have,” she said without regret.
“But what you’ve written isn’t right, Lis,” he said, annoyed.
She turned toward her desk, bent down, and brought up a manila folder of the archived materials.
Carl tried to keep his wandering eyes in check. There was certainly more of her since she had given birth to her last child at the age of forty-six. Her body looked just as it should, but maybe one could help her along by burning off some of that baby belly. He breathed deeply. She had always been his first choice when he tuned in to his nighttime fantasies, and then she went and pulled this number on him.
“No,” she said, her hand on a row of numbers. “I didn’t understand it either, but look, what I wrote is correct. I’m sorry, Carl, but you’ve handed in exactly as many reports on closed and solved cases as I’ve noted here.” She pointed at the number on the last line. Not a number Carl recognized.
“I’ve even embellished it a little, Carl, sweetie.” There was that smile with the overlapping front teeth, whatever good it was just now.
Hearing the sound of steps behind him, Carl turned around. It was the police commissioner in his best suit on his way in to Lars Bjørn’s office.
The nod he directed at Carl was extremely reserved. The chosen efficiency expert of police headquarters was obviously on one of his rare but fierce rounds.
—
“Where is Rose?” shouted Carl when he reached the final step on his way down to the basement.
The echo from the empty corridor had hardly returned before Assad poked his curly mop of hair around the opening to his broom cupboard of an office.
“She isn’t here, Carl. She left.”
“Left? When?”
“Just after you went to court. At least two hours ago, so I wouldn’t count on her coming back today. At least not imminently.”
“Do you know anything about Rose not sending the reports on the cases we’ve cleared up—apart from the Habersaat case, obviously?”
“What cases? When?”
“Our man up on the Walk of Fame says that over the last twenty-four months, Rose has only delivered a fifth of the reports to homicide.”
Assad looked shocked. Obviously he didn’t know.
“Damn it, Assad, she’s gone loopy.” Carl walked determinedly to his desk, dialed Rose’s home number, and let it ring until her answering machine kicked in.
It wasn’t a message he had heard before. Rose’s answering-machine message was normally borderline hysterically bubbly, but this time the voice sounded unusually hoarse and sad.
“This is Rose Knudsen,” it said. “If you need me for anything, tough luck. Leave a message but don’t count on me listening to it because that’s just the way I am.” And then came the beep.
“Rose, come on, answer the phone; it’s important,” Carl said anyway. Maybe she was on the other end snarling, maybe even laughing, but he’d put a stop to that when he got ahold of her. Because if it was Rose who had made such an outstandingly shoddy job of her reports, Department Q would be one employee down regardless.
“What about you, Gordon? Did you find any of Rose’s documentation?”
He nodded, leaning in over Carl’s computer. “I’ve sent it to you so you can see for yourself.” He opened the file, scrolling down through the pages.
Carl was tight-lipped. Line for line, there was an exact account of which cases Department Q had been working on, which case numbers, the nature of the cases, and the dates when they were opened and closed and with what result. Green columns for cases solved, blue for those they were working on right now, purple for those they had put to one side, and red for those they had given up on. There was even a date for when the report was finished and forwarded to management. It was fair to say that viewers of the file would be met with a very positive impression, and all cases apart from the Habersaat case were checked with a tick. All according to the book.
“I don’t know what this is all about, Carl, but our Rose has done what she was meant to,” said Gordon, coming to her defense like a knight in shining armor.
“How has she delivered them?” came a voice from the door.
Gordon turned toward Assad, who was standing with a cup of sugar-filled tea in his hand.
“As an attachment sent on our intranet.”
Assad nodded. “To what address? Have you checked, Gordon?”
He stretched out his lanky body, plodding back to Rose’s office while mumbling to himself. He obviously hadn’t.
Carl pricked his ears. Hard leather soles on the concrete floor wasn’t a sound you normally heard down here. An ominous sound like that adopted by Hollywood actors when creating the illusion of a Nazi officer in second-rate war films could be replicated only by Mrs. Sørensen. Normal police workers wear rubber soles, unless they have a permanent seat in the domain of the police commissioner, and it definitely wasn’t any of them.
“Goodness, it stinks here,” was Mrs. Sørensen’s first remark, her top lip drowning in small beads of sweat. The other day, it had been remarked that during her hot flashes, she sat with her feet in a tub of cold water under the desk. There was always a good story about Mrs. Sørensen’s behavior, and it was seldom untrue.
“You’d better not drag this Middle Eastern smell with you upstairs to us,” she continued, placing a plastic folder in front of him. “Here are the detailed statistics for your department. Over the last six months, we’ve as good as not received a single report from you, leading management to conclude that you haven’t solved anything of significance in that time frame. But now Lis and I have begun to question that because we do follow what goes on here at headquarters, and thank goodness we do. We know that Department Q has had good publicity in the media concerning the cases you’ve worked on in that same time period, so something doesn’t add up, I’ll say that much.”
She attempted a little smile but was obviously not in the habit because it didn’t work.
“Look at this, Carl,” said Gordon, bursting in. He put the printout on the table and pointed. “Rose has sent her files to both Lis and Catarina.” He nodded to her. “Only to Lis in the beginning, and since Lis
’s maternity leave almost exclusively to Catarina Sørensen.”
Mrs. Sørensen bent her sweaty body over the printout. “Yes,” she said, nodding. “The address is right enough and, in principle, it is to me. The problem is that it is more than twenty months since that address has been active; I got divorced in the meantime and went back to my maiden name. The initials aren’t CS anymore but CUS.”
Carl put his head in his hands. Why wasn’t there an automatic redirection from the old e-mail address to the new one? Was it sabotage, or had the mess the rest of society lived in now come to them?
“What does CUS stand for?” asked Gordon.
“Catarina Underberg Sørensen,” she answered with pathos.
“Why still Sørensen, when you’ve changed back to your maiden name?”
“Because, little Gordon, Underberg Sørensen was my maiden name.”
“Oh. And you married a Sørensen and ended up being called the same just without the other part?”
“Yes, that’s how my husband wanted it. He felt it was too posh with the other part.” She momentarily tutted. “Or it was just because he was a miserable alcoholic and didn’t want to have a nickname.”
Gordon looked confused, obviously not understanding her last remark.
“Underberg is a German bitter, Gordon,” she informed him surlily, as if it was of any interest to a man who rarely drank and could get plastered from aftershave fumes.
—
Just finished with a report of the sort that would put the police commissioner in his place, and which could also create an enemy for life, Carl leaned back and looked around. This humble basement corridor was his base until they carried him out in a box. He had everything here that he needed: an ashtray, a flat-screen with all the channels, and a desk with drawers you could put your feet up on. Where else could you find these necessities at police HQ?
Carl imagined the police commissioner’s difficulty in explaining himself to the judicial committee and burst out laughing until the telephone rang.
“Is that Carl?” asked a bland voice, which he felt he ought to recognize but couldn’t quite place.
“It’s Marcus. Marcus Jacobsen,” said the voice when the pause became too long.
“Marcus! Well, I’ll be damned! I almost didn’t recognize your voice,” he blurted out.
Carl couldn’t help but smile. Marcus Jacobsen, his old boss in homicide on the other end of the phone! A living example that Denmark was once led by people who were both serious and knew what they were doing like the back of their hand.
“Yeah, I know. The voice is a little hoarse, but it is me, Carl. I’ve just had my share of cigarettes since we last met!”
It must be three to four years since they had last spoken, so there was a slight sense of bad conscience creeping through the line. Carl knew Marcus had been through the mill of it lately, just not how it had all ended. That was the real mistake, because he ought to know.
After five minutes, the full extent of the catastrophe was explained. Marcus had been made a widower and was marked for life.
“I am really sorry to hear that, Marcus,” Carl said, trying to find words of comfort in a brain that didn’t normally deal with that sort of thing.
“Thanks, Carl, but that’s not why I’m ringing. I think we need each other right now. I’ve just come across a case that I think we ought to talk about. Not because I’m trying to set you up on the case—the people on the Walk of Fame would be against it—but because the case reminds me of another one that has been niggling away at me for years. And maybe inadvertently because I’ve been reminded of how grateful I am that there is still someone at HQ who keeps their eyes open for cases that would otherwise be pushed in a corner.”
—
Café Gammel Torv was where they had agreed to meet fifty minutes later.
Marcus was already sitting at his old table. He had grown older and was looking more tired, but maybe that wasn’t so strange after the awful years before his wife eventually succumbed.
Now he was alone, and Carl knew firsthand what loneliness and a feeling of being abandoned could do to a man.
Not that their experiences were comparable.
Marcus took his hand as if they had been old friends and not colleagues at different stages of the career ladder.
Perhaps out of politeness and perhaps because of a desire to immerse himself in the reality of police headquarters, he asked Carl how things had been recently with Department Q.
The question was like fuel to Carl’s fire, causing him to burst out with such frustration that it almost made the jelly on the pâté wobble.
Marcus Jacobsen nodded; no one knew better than him that the constellation of Carl’s and Lars Bjørn’s totally different personalities could easily result in something explosive.
“But Lars Bjørn is actually an all right guy, Carl. I can’t imagine that he’s behind this number. Even though old e-mail addresses normally are forwarded to a new one. Could the police commissioner be behind this?”
Carl couldn’t see the logic. What on earth would the commissioner get out of it?
“But what does an old former head of homicide know about politics? Still, I’d look into it if I were you.” He nodded to the waiter, indicating that he could pour another schnapps, downed it in one, and cleared his throat. “What do you know about the murder of Rigmor Zimmermann?”
Carl followed Marcus’s lead, downing his drink in one. It was one of those types of schnapps that tied the intestine in knots.
“Just the right schnapps for my mother-in-law,” Carl said, coughing and drying away the tears from the corners of his eyes. “What do I know? Not too much, actually. They’re investigating the case up on the second floor, so it’s outside my remit. But the woman was murdered in the King’s Garden, right? Was it three weeks ago?”
“Er, almost. Tuesday, the 26th of April, at approximately quarter past eight in the evening, to be more precise.”
“She was in her midsixties, as far as I remember, and it was a robbery murder. Wasn’t there a few thousand kroner missing from her purse?”
“Ten thousand, according to the daughter, yes.” Marcus nodded.
“The murder weapon wasn’t found, but it was a blunt instrument, and that’s just about all I know. I’ve had enough to do with my own cases, but I might just know what you’re thinking. I almost got goose bumps when you called, Marcus, because it was just a couple of hours after I’d spoken with a certain Mogens Iversen. Maybe you remember him as the guy who confessed to all sorts of crimes?”
After the slightest of pauses, Marcus nodded. There was no one at headquarters—well, apart from Hardy—who could match his total recall.
“And Iversen also confessed to the murder of that substitute teacher, Stephanie Gundersen. I’m sure he got the idea after reading about the attack on Rigmor Zimmermann because I can imagine how the papers have drawn the connection between the two attacks. Of course, I threw the idiot out afterward.”
“The papers? No, no one has seriously connected the two cases, as far as I know, but we didn’t release many details at the time about the murder of Stephanie.”
“Okay. Then let’s just say that you and I know that there are a few similarities between the two cases. But you ought to know that the Stephanie Gundersen case hasn’t been passed on to me. I do have a slim case file about it, but the bulk of the material is up with Bjørn.”
“Do you still have Hardy living with you?”
Carl smiled at the change of topic. “Yeah, I won’t be rid of him until the day he finds a woman who is turned on by wheelchairs and wiping saliva and snot.” He regretted the joke straightaway—it was a bad call.
“No, jokes aside, things are the same with Hardy,” he continued. “He’s still living with me and it’s going great. He’s actually become quite mobile. It’s almost miraculous w
hat he can manage with the two fingers he’s got a little sensation in. But why are you asking about that?”
“Back at the time of the Stephanie Gundersen case, Hardy came to me with some information about her and the school where she was a substitute teacher. Apparently, Hardy had met her before. Maybe you didn’t know?”
“Er, no. He wasn’t investigating it anyway, because in 2004 he was with me and . . .”
“Hardy was never afraid to give his colleagues a helping hand. A fine man. Really sad what happened to him.”
Carl smiled, tilting his head. “I think I understand, Marcus. Your purpose is clear.”
He smiled and stood up. “Really! That genuinely pleases me, Inspector Carl Mørck. Very much so,” he said, pushing a few pieces of paper with notes over toward him. “I hope you have a good Whitsun.”
11
Wednesday, May 11th, to Friday, May 20th, 2016
What no one around Anneli knew was that the Anne-Line Svendsen they thought they knew, for better or for worse, had, in reality, not existed for quite a few days.
Her usual day-to-day life had recently been altered by both worry and excessive anger, during which time she had repeatedly begun to reevaluate her current life and self-image. From having been a conscientious citizen and employee whose ideals included being community-minded and having a positive work ethic, she had become a genuine Mr. Hyde, lost in her most base instincts as she decided on the course of events that would determine her future and possibly short-lived life.
Following her diagnosis with cancer, she had experienced a couple of days weighed down by a fear of death, which had manifested itself in a sort of passive anger that was once again directed at those damn young women who totally cheated society, wasting both their own and other people’s time. With that and the way they had mocked her in mind, Anneli defined her simple mantra:
The Scarred Woman Page 8
