The Scarred Woman

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  “I don’t understand what she’s saying,” whispered Assad. But Carl had questioned worse. At least she answered.

  “You say you don’t remember a Stephanie Gundersen who was a substitute teacher for your daughter’s class. But according to what we’ve heard, you two had a serious run-in. We’ve heard that you had a big fight at one of the parent-teacher conferences. Don’t you remember that, Birgit?”

  She shook her head in bewilderment.

  “She was the substitute teacher at Bolman’s who was murdered in Østre Anlæg Park. My former boss actually questioned you in connection with that back in 2004.”

  Birgit Zimmermann held up a finger in the air and nodded. Finally they had a connection.

  “Do you remember why you were so agitated at the meeting? What happened between you and that Stephanie?”

  In her drunken stupor, she shook her head and pointed her finger in the air again. “I know what you’re up to, ha-ha. You must think I’m an idiot and that you can pin something on me. But let me tell you, if you want to know anything about that, you’d be better off talking to my mother.”

  “That will prove difficult because your mother is dead, Birgit.”

  “Oh, oops, I forgot. But then you can ask my daughter. And you can also ask her who killed my mother.”

  “What do you mean? Are you hinting that Denise killed your mother?”

  “Ha-ha, you’re at it again,” she said, laughing hoarsely. “So you do think I’m an idiot, but I didn’t say what you just said. They’re your words.”

  “May I say something?” asked Assad. As if he would keep quiet if she said no.

  She looked at him a little confused, as if she had only just noticed he was there and almost appeared to be trying to remember where she knew him from.

  “It seems that your daughter didn’t have the best relationship with her grandmother. Is that right?”

  She smiled. “Well, aren’t you the clever one. They hated each other, to be blunt.”

  Assad kept direct eye contact so she couldn’t avoid looking at him. “And why was that, Birgit? Was it because Denise suddenly turned her back on her family—something Stephanie Gundersen helped her with?”

  He had expected a reaction, that much was clear, but not that she would hold her breath for a moment after having sprayed him with saliva when she laughed in his face.

  “Let’s say that, chocolate man,” she said with a sniff. “That sounds perfect.”

  And then she collapsed backward on the sofa and went out like a light.

  Their audience was over.

  —

  “We didn’t do too well there, Carl,” said Assad back at the station. There was no reason for him to say “we.”

  Carl nodded to the security guards.

  “I can see it in your faces,” he said to them. “Do I have to report to Lars Bjørn’s office again?”

  They shook their heads. “No, this time it’s the police commissioner’s office,” one of them said, laughing.

  Carl turned to Assad. “We’re agreed that we’re going to take this case to the end, right, Assad?”

  He nodded.

  “You and Gordon dig up all you can find about the Zimmermann family, okay? I want to know everything. When was Birgit married? What happened to her husband? How long had Denise been at Bolman’s Independent School? Where is the teacher who was at the meeting with Stephanie and Birgit Zimmermann? What is there of any worth in Rigmor Zimmermann’s estate? Anything like that so we can build up a better picture of this odd family. And one more thing: Find Denise Zimmermann even if it means you have to drive all the way to Slagelse.”

  —

  The police commissioner was not alone. Marcus Jacobsen was already sitting at the glass table on one of the strange leather chairs with three legs, nodding in a friendly manner.

  “Take a seat,” said the commissioner.

  Carl felt strange. The time had finally come after many years at HQ when he was sitting in the sanctuary with all the portraits of the commissioner’s predecessors staring down at him.

  “I’ll get straight to the point, Carl Mørck,” said the commissioner. “I apologize that I was misled in relation to the percentage of solved cases in your department. It was based on a misunderstanding that has now been rectified, and your department will continue as before.” He nodded to Carl. “I want you to establish a better relationship with the TV crew here to make a program for Station 3. They will be shadowing you for the rest of the day. And I recommend you give them something to make them happy.”

  Carl nodded. He would damn well give them something.

  “Marcus here tells me that the old Stephanie Gundersen case and the murder of Rigmor Zimmermann have been linked to each other down in your department.”

  Carl looked at Marcus with slight reproach, but he shook his head dismissively.

  “While the case technically belongs to Lars Bjørn’s department, and I seriously doubt that he will hand it over willingly, the situation is that his department have their hands full with the hit-and-run murders. Apart from that, I’m in charge of who does what, and I am assigning the case to you, Carl.”

  Pure revenge for the embarrassment Lars Bjørn caused him in front of the judicial committee, thought Carl. And the man responsible for this turn of events was sitting right next to him.

  He winked at Marcus to thank him.

  “Bring the TV crew up to speed with how you linked the cases and make sure they get some good shots, because we want to be able to see the efficiency of the police when the show is broadcast. Finally, I would like to add that Marcus Jacobsen has agreed to join HQ as an external consultant. I have no doubt that his experience will prove more than beneficial when the need arises.”

  Carl nodded to Marcus. Brilliant news. But Marcus signaled that Carl would need to take the initiative now. Carl didn’t understand immediately what he meant, but Marcus managed to make him understand that they weren’t finished here yet with a few jerks of his head in the direction of the commissioner.

  Carl cleared his throat. “Well, thank you, and we will do everything we can to solve the Stephanie Gundersen and Rigmor Zimmermann cases. I’d also like to apologize for my behavior the other day. It won’t happen again.”

  A rare smile spread across the commissioner’s face.

  The desired balance had been reestablished.

  It felt great walking past Lars Bjørn’s office. They say revenge is sweet, but that was an understatement. Revenge was amazing.

  He nodded to Lis and Mrs. Sørensen in recognition of their indirect role and was still smiling as he almost bumped into Mona. They stood for a moment only half a meter apart, and Carl noticed how tired she looked.

  “Have you made any progress with Rose?” she asked politely, but her mind was clearly elsewhere. Her skin was pale and once again she emanated vulnerability and the form of melancholia brought about by wasted opportunities.

  “Are you okay, Mona?” he asked automatically, hoping that she would break down crying in his arms and confess how unhappy she had been every second since they broke up.

  “Yes, thanks,” she said dryly. “But I probably shouldn’t have eaten the prawns in the canteen. Prawns have never agreed with me.”

  He could feel that his smile had frozen as she walked over to her office.

  “Her daughter is very ill, Carl,” said Lis. “She’s got a lot on her plate.”

  39

  Monday, May 30th, 2016

  Olaf Borg-Pedersen’s TV crew had already lined up and turned on a couple of cameras in the middle of the corridor, capturing Carl’s tired descent to the basement. There was even one in his office, and behind Carl’s desk sat the TV producer himself with his sound technician and photographer, waiting like vultures for someone to draw his last breath.

  “And Inspector Carl
Mørck is a busy man,” he mouthed off as soon as Carl walked in. “Station 3 has been granted access for a few days to follow what goes on behind the scenes as the police work to make society a better place.”

  He nodded to his cameraman, who hurried over to the camera and dismounted it from the tripod.

  “We are faced with terrible actions every day that ruin the lives of innocent people.”

  They’re not all innocent, thought Carl while trying to avoid the handheld camera capturing more images of his already annoyed expression.

  “A hit-and-run driver is on the loose, and young women continue to fall victim to the killer. Station 3 would like to contribute to putting a stop to this. Perhaps Carl Mørck has hit a dead end that our viewers can help him out of.”

  You’re the one at a dead end, idiot. It’s not even our case, so how about doing your job properly, he thought while nodding and conceiving a new and viable idea to irritate the chief of homicide and the police commissioner even more.

  “Yes,” he said seriously. “The public is often our best ally. Where would we be without alert members of the public keeping an eye on unusual situations and events?”

  He turned to face the camera.

  “But as long as our internal system prevents me from working on cases that have been assigned to others, I can’t help you with this particular case.”

  “Are you saying that this case is the jurisdiction of another department?”

  “Yes, and here in Department Q we’re not supposed to get involved in ongoing cases, even though it might shed new light on them.”

  “Would you call that shortsighted? Shouldn’t the police think outside the box?”

  Carl nodded. As the police commissioner had requested, the program finally had something to pursue. Olaf Borg-Pedersen was almost drooling.

  “So are we to understand that your hands are tied in relation to the most recent hit-and-run incident?”

  The most recent hit-and-run incident? Carl had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Just a minute,” he interrupted. “Let me get my assistant. You want the recordings to be realistic, right? He would normally be here when we discuss the latest developments.”

  He found Gordon and Assad talking in the situation room, apparently unaware of the chaos Carl had been thrown into.

  “How did it go with the police commissioner?” asked Assad.

  Carl nodded. “Fine, thanks. But what the hell is going on? Has there been another hit-and-run murder?”

  “We don’t know yet,” answered Gordon. “It doesn’t resemble the other murders. More like a nasty accident.”

  “Fill me in quickly. The vultures in there want to—”

  “And here we are in the Department Q situation room,” came a sudden voice from the doorway, making Carl jump. He turned around toward Olaf Borg-Pedersen, who had a microphone stuck halfway in his mouth and was being closely followed by his colleague with the handheld camera. “As far as we understand, this is the room where the cases are linked together and scrutinized, and where the team tries to gain an overview of all the events,” he continued. “On the notice board on the wall here, we can see the cases the team is working on at the moment. Can you explain what we’re looking at, Carl Mørck?”

  “Sorry,” he said, doing his best to hide the information on the notice board from the camera. He damn well didn’t want the Zimmermann case to be spotted by anyone on the second floor. That would be rubbing their noses in it too much. “To enable us to best solve these cases, we can’t go into too much detail regarding our methods in this program.”

  “That’s understandable.” Olaf Borg-Pedersen nodded but looked like a man who was determined to get the shots he wanted anyway. “We spoke earlier about the hit-and-run murders. Only four days ago the young Michelle Hansen was massacred in Stenløse, and the incident was witnessed by two innocent children. Before that, Senta Berger was killed under similar circumstances, and yesterday the victim was Bertha Lind on Amager. What do you have to say about that? Can Department Q already at this stage link this latest terrible incident to the others?” he asked.

  “Well,” interrupted Gordon, “in contrast to the other cases, we still don’t know if Bertha Lind was hit intentionally. And in order to link cases like these, there have to be either skid marks with clear tire markings or skid marks indicating the same type of rubber as in the previous cases.”

  Carl looked disapprovingly at the lanky sod. This wasn’t meant to get too serious.

  “Yes. The way we see it, skid marks or no skid marks,” he interrupted, “there definitely seems to be a serial killer on the loose, and it’s probably time for the press to be given more than the spare information we have provided so far. However, that’s up to the head of communications Janus Staal, so you’ll have to go back up to the second floor.”

  Olaf Borg-Pedersen stood up on his toes. “I couldn’t help but notice that you’ve put up the case being referred to as ‘The Nightclub Case’ next to this one. Are we actually dealing with a cluster of interconnected cases?”

  Carl suppressed a sigh. What an idiot! Why else would the cases be next to each other? “That’s something we can’t rule out. The young woman, Birna Sigurdardottir, who has now tragically passed away, was on social benefits like the others and around the same age. Did they know each other? Were they involved in something together? That’s the question. But maybe Station 3 viewers can help us with that. And good luck with the interviews with the communications department. Perhaps you’ll have the opportunity to touch on the police policy that sometimes hinders us in working together across departments and cases.”

  —

  When the TV crew had left, Carl grabbed a well-deserved cup of coffee in his office while laughing out loud with relief. What a load of rubbish he had spouted off. It was hardly what Bjørn and the commissioner had imagined. Some people might even call it an ambush, but the fact of the matter was that it finally enabled him to get rid of those idiots.

  Then he heard a commotion in the corridor, and a second later Assad and Gordon burst into his office together.

  Gordon was first and sounded out of breath. “The technicians have now concluded that it was the red Peugeot that was used to hit Michelle the first time, and it was the same car used to kill Senta Berger, Carl,” he almost cheered. “Lots of traces such as hair and blood on the hood and the fender.”

  Assad stood next to him groaning. “Everything is spinning around in my head just now, Carl. Can’t you just—”

  “It’s highly likely that Michelle Hansen was connected with the robbery at the nightclub,” continued Gordon. “I’ve spoken to one of the people who questioned Patrick Pettersson, who was Michelle’s boyfriend, and Patrick swears that he wasn’t involved and has been extremely cooperative. But Pasgård isn’t satisfied and has brought him in for a third questioning. They are squeezing him for more details as we speak. I think Pasgård will let him go anytime now, so I thought we could lure him down here before he disappears.”

  Lure? thought Carl. Gordon was on a mission, but if it annoyed Pasgård, he was in.

  “Do you mind if I say something? Shouldn’t we discuss what we’ve discovered in the Zimmermann case first?” interrupted Assad. “Carl, you had a lot of questions and I’d like to have the chance to answer them, if you don’t mind.”

  Carl nodded. Were these two in competition with each other now?

  Assad looked at his notepad. “You asked when Birgit Zimmermann was married. I assume you mean to Denise Zimmermann’s father?”

  “Yes. Were there others?”

  “There were. In 1984, when she was eighteen years old, she married a Yugoslavian migrant worker, but they were divorced three months later. In 1987 she was remarried. This time to a former captain in the US Army who was working as a bartender in central Copenhagen. That year she became pregnant with Denise, who
was baptized Dorrit when she was born in 1988. The American was the one with the surname Frank, of course. James Lester Frank to be precise. Born in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1958. He hasn’t paid taxes in Denmark since 1995, making me assume he moved back to the US. I’ll follow up on that if you think it’s worthwhile.”

  He seemed very keen to move on.

  “Thanks. I think we should pass this on to Marcus to follow up. He’s already looking at the case,” said Carl.

  “And then there was your second question. Denise had attended a school in Rødovre but switched to Bolman’s Independent School in the third grade and left after the ninth grade in June 2004.”

  “So a few weeks after Stephanie Gundersen was murdered. Am I right?” asked Carl.

  Assad nodded. “Yes. And the teacher who was present at the parent-teacher meeting with Stephanie when she and Stephanie argued with Denise’s mother a few months before still works at the school but couldn’t remember the meeting or Denise’s mother. But she remembered their substitute teacher being murdered in the middle of the exam period and how annoying that had been.”

  “Because it happened during the exam period?”

  “Yes, actually. She had to step in and take Stephanie’s place as a proctor for the final-year exams and certainly didn’t sound like someone who had grieved at the time.”

  “That’s a bit cynical,” said Gordon.

  Assad nodded. “She really sounds like one of the witches from Ball Mountain.”

  “You mean Bald Mountain, Assad,” Carl corrected him.

  Assad looked at Carl as if he was crazy. Did it really matter in this connection what the name of the mountain was?

  “It was far too difficult to talk with the internal revenue service or the probate court. To be honest, they weren’t very cooperative. But Lis helped me—she’s a real spot when it comes to that sort of thing, Carl.”

  Spot? “You mean a real sport, Assad.”

  Carl had hit a nerve. “Can you not stop interrupting me all the time, Carl?”

  Carl nodded. “Yes, but ‘can you not stop interrupting me’ isn’t quite what you mean, Assad. It would be better if you said, ‘can you stop interrupting me all the time.’”